


Something Wicked This Way Comes

by RileyC



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), DCU, Superman Returns, World's Finest - Fandom
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Romance, Thriller, meteorites, murder investigation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 05:41:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/352635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RileyC/pseuds/RileyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every fifteen years, a killer known as the Gravedigger comes out to hunt. Batman and Jim Gordon are  determined this will be the last time around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> June 11, 2012: Everything fixed now! Sorry for any confusion!

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/silverheels17/8273029517/)

cover by X_Tangy

_Gotham City, 15 years ago_

Slowing his patrol car, Jim Gordon glanced in the rearview mirror and tried to isolate the image that had popped out at him as he drove past. He was on a lonely stretch of road on the outskirts of Gotham, rain- sodden leaves piled ankle-deep along the roadside. There was nothing to distinguish it from any other desolate spot, but—

He pressed the brakes as a gust of wind flung raindrops at his windshield—and stirred a pile of leaves at the side of the road, revealing what had caught his eye.

It was a hand, little more than the fingertips, poking through the fallen leaves.

~*~

The leaves and twigs had all been cleared away; Brenda Taylor’s mutilated body was buried in a shallow grave, with a few shovelfuls of dirt scattered over her as a final indignity. The crisp October weather had slowed decomposition, so her eyes were still opened wide, eternally surprised and fixed on the gray, overcast sky.

For years afterward, what stayed with Jim most was the memory of those long, white fingers, crooked as if beckoning him. As if inviting him to come closer so she could whisper a secret to him, if only the dead could speak.

  


_Now_  


It all came rushing back to him as he stood over another grave, this one in the trash-strewn playground of a long-abandoned school. Another girl had been dumped there, one arm flung out from the damp earth and leaves, hand cupped to catch the falling rain.

“The son of a bitch is back.”

“Who?” The single syllable was a low rumble. Jim spared a sideways glance for the dark-cloaked figure that had dropped down beside him.

“Before your time,” Jim said as lightning forked the sky and thunder cracked. Sometimes, it really was a dark and stormy night. “We called him the Gravedigger…”

  


**Chapter One**  


“Kent!” Perry White slapped a copy of that morning’s edition of the Gotham Gazette down on Clark’s desk, its lurid banner headline proclaiming **GRAVEDIGGER BURIES COMPETITION!** “I want you in Gotham on this story yesterday!”

“Me, Chief?” Clark pushed at his glasses as he glanced around the newsroom. “Lois—“ 

“You, Kent. Lois has her own assignment, and I’m tired of the Planet running second hand stories on this Gravedigger.”

Clark already knew the details of this latest murder. How Mitchell Dean, prime suspect in a series of brutal home invasions, was the latest to fall prey to the Gravedigger. His body had been discovered last night in a makeshift grave at a Wayne Enterprises construction site. Bruce told him the police had mixed feelings on this slaying, and no one was entirely ready to connect it to the other deaths yet. 

_“Is there a chance it could be a coincidence?” Clark asked._

_“Not much,” Bruce answered over their private line. Clark hadn’t needed super hearing to tell his friend was tired and frustrated._

_“Have you been sleeping?”_

_“I’ve already got Alfred fussing over me.”_

_“That’s what happens when you care about someone.”_

_For a moment, he thought his only reply would be the long-suffering sigh on the other end, but then Bruce said, “I’ve got things under control, Clark. Stop fretting.”_

_“I’ll fret if I want to. And you’d say you had things under control if Darkseid and a thousand parademons had you surrounded.”_

_“And I’d be right.”_

_Clark smiled; he really couldn’t dispute that. “Do you need me?”_

_“Under control, Clark,” Bruce reminded him._

_A slightly different timbre to his voice, more intimate, Clark asked, “Do you want me?”_

_Another long pause, and this time, Clark really thought he wouldn’t get a reply. “Bruce…?”_

_“Not a good time.”_

_“According to you, it never is.”_

_“That should tell you something.”_

_Oh, it did; it told him Bruce was more scared of the fallout of one stolen kiss than of Darkseid and those thousand parademons. Curiously, that knowledge gave Clark a great deal of hope—_

“Kent!”

Startled out of his woolgathering, Clark blinked wide-eyed at Perry. “Chief?”

“You, Gotham – now,” Perry growled. “And don’t call me Chief!” he called after him as Clark scrambled for an elevator. And if Perry noticed that the car Clark stepped into was headed for the roof instead of the lobby, he didn’t see any reason to call anyone else’s attention to it.

“Olsen!” he bellowed across the room. “What are you doing here? I want you at LexCorp for Luthor’s press conference…”

~*~

“Be sure to watch _The Mike Engle Report_ tonight,” the perky afternoon GCN anchor said, “when his special guest will be Police Commissioner James Gordon with the latest on the Gravedigger slayings. Now switching gears, Snooki—“

Clicking off the television, Bruce dropped the remote and dug another batch of thirty-year-old police reports out of the box he’d brought up from the cave. He scooted back on the couch, comfortable in his pajamas and with his bare feet propped on a pillow. He scanned one report, then another, even as he tried to fight off the weariness that crept up on him. He’d take a nap in a little while, when he’d found the clue, however insignificant it might have seemed at the time, that he was positive was buried somewhere in these old reports about the Gravedigger.

_“Maybe the third time will be the charm for catching him,” Jim Gordon said as Batman scoured the roughly dug grave and the old schoolyard around it for any trace evidence, while the GCPD crime scenes unit impatiently looked on and cast sour looks Jim’s way._

_“Third time?” Batman looked up from tweezing free a scrap of torn cloth snagged on the rusty bolt of a swing-set. Probably nothing, and it could have been there for years, but the dirt and gravel nearby was smeared, as if someone might have stepped there and slipped, and banged into the rickety swing-set before righting themselves. The chance of getting useful prints was slim to none, but he got out his kit and dusted a few likely surfaces just on the off chance._

_“The Gravedigger,” Jim said, holding a flashlight steady as Batman worked. “This is the third time around for him. Halloween 1966 – that was the first time. I was six and headed out to go trick-or-treating—“_

_“As what?”_

_“An astronaut, if you can believe it.”_

_Batman found he could. “What happened?”_

_“I’d barely made it to the fifth house on the block when my mother comes tearing up in her car and tells me to get in. My father had called her and told her they’d just found three kids killed and left in desecrated graves at the cemetery. You can imagine Halloween was never quite the same after that.”_

_Batman nodded and stood up. “I can.” He scanned the playground one more time and concluded he’d found all there was to find, especially with the rain coming down harder. “Gotham has that effect on a lot of things,” he murmured, half to himself. He remembered some stories he’d heard growing up, of a ghoulish figure said to stalk Gotham’s darkest byways, blood dripping from a scythe. They had been wonderfully chilling at the time but had lost their power to frighten him once a far more brutal reality had crashed down upon him. “Has this killer always been called the Gravedigger? Was he ever called the Grim Reaper?”_

_Jim nodded, thoughtful. “That’s what my father called him, now you mention it.”_

_Batman turned to look at Jim as something started to click together. “We’re saying this is the same killer, appearing at fifteen year intervals – since 1966? The same killer operating over forty-five years?” He locked eyes with Jim Gordon, and saw the same doubts and questions reflected back at him._

_“Could be a copycat,” Jim said quietly, gaze fixed on the grave once more._

_“Maybe.”_

_Jim looked at him. “And if it isn’t--”_

_“--we may have to expand our parameters.”_

_Jim nodded and sighed. “That’s Gotham for you,” he said – but he was already speaking to himself._

Bruce smothered a yawn and tried to rub the blurriness from his eyes as he dug deeper through the box, going back further until he found the 1966 reports. Rain lashed the library windows, and he turned the lamp up and settled back with the reports, eyes drifting shut. He forced them open, but try as he might, the words continued to blur and run together – _Grim Ripper? Must have been a typo._ – and the reports finally slipped from his slack fingers as he sank back against the cushions, treacherous sleep dragging him down at last.

~*~

Warm and comfortable, Bruce knew he should wake up, that there were important things he was supposed to do. It was so very tempting to linger here, however, and enjoy the gentle fingers that combed so rhythmically through his hair.

Sometimes, he really wished he could have walked a different path.

He blinked his eyes open and took in his surroundings. The curtains had been drawn against the late September evening, and the lights turned low; most of the room’s illumination came from the fire crackling in the fireplace. Someone had tucked a soft and cozy blanket around him, and his head rested all too comfortably against Clark’s thigh. A person might suppose Bruce Wayne took a nap with his head in Clark Kent’s lap all the time. 

A person might even wish it were true.

“What time is it?”

“About six.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Little while.”

He closed his eyes again, and decided he could allow himself this indulgence for another sixty seconds. Maybe ninety, he amended as those fingers slid through his hair again and again.

“Didn’t I say something about having everything under control?”

“Rings a bell. You didn’t say anything about Perry White not assigning me to cover the story.”

No, he supposed he hadn’t. “Where’s Lois? Out getting kidnapped by the killer?” Those fingers, so careful a second before, yanked ever so slightly on his hair and provoked a half-hearted, “Oww.”

“That’s not funny, Bruce.”

“Who says I’m joking? She could single-handedly solve the case by walking straight into the killer’s lair, while you swoop down to rescue her from his diabolical clutches.” At least that would be a kind of plan, which was more than he had now.

“Still not funny. And she’s in Metropolis, looking into what Lex Luthor’s up to now.”

“Hmm. Wild guess: some egomaniacal plan for world domination, with you horrifically dead from Kryptonite exposure as the centerpiece?” 

“Why, Bruce, are you implying Lex is predictable?”

Bruce smiled, sighed, and shifted against him. If he had walked that different path, would he even be here? If he never became more than ‘Bruce,’ how on earth would he have ever met Superman? Well, he could construct several plausible scenarios, but as most of them would have required him to assume something equivalent to a damsel-in-distress role, he promptly dismissed them. 

He sat up and stretched lazily. “They’re all predictable, even the Joker, even this Gravedigger. Why doesn’t that make them easier to stop?”

“I don’t know,” Clark said. He took the question seriously, as Bruce knew he would. “Maybe because being able to anticipate what they’re going to do isn’t the same as comprehending why they do it, what kicks it all into motion?”

Head resting against the back of the couch, Bruce watched the shadows cast by the fire and sighed as he saw this battle against the dark forces stretching out eternally. He found himself momentarily overwhelmed by the bleak picture. Perhaps it might help if he didn’t think of it in terms of battling infinite dark forces. 

His lips quirked at his flirtation with melodrama, and he made a decision. “You can stay and cover the story for the _Planet_ , but no putting on the suit unless it’s an absolute emergency.” 

“So long as I decide what constitutes an absolute emergency.”

Bruce thought about that and slipped his hand into Clark’s. “Well, I suppose there is no predicting just when a cat will get stuck in a tree.” 

Clark’s palm was warm and dry against his, and squeezed so very gently. “I promise to use discretion.”

“They say there’s a first time for everything.” Bruce pressed back just as carefully, conscious of a fragility that went beyond flesh and bone.

“Can I kiss you?”

“You didn’t ask the first time.”

“You would have said no.”

Would he have? Bruce wondered, remembering that night.

It had been a night like every other as he put out some fires and saved a few lives. He had come back exhausted to the cold, damp of the cave with no new wounds to stitch up, just an overall, bone deep ache. All he’d wanted was a shower and his bed. Then he’d seen the bright primary colors – and the twin cupcakes, each sprouting three small candles.

_“Is there an occasion I’ve forgotten?” he asked as he dragged off his cowl._

_“Probably,” Clark said, looking like some rare butterfly or exotically plumaged bird who had mistakenly taken refuge in this dark cave. “It’s our anniversary.”_

_“Our anniversary?” He wasn’t aware they had reached the stage of having anniversaries._

_“Umm hmm. It was three years ago tonight that you first ordered me to stay out of your city.”_

_“And this merits a moment of fond remembrance?”_

_“Why not?” Clark said, as Bruce eyed the cupcakes dubiously and reached for the aromatic cup of coffee that waited for him. “They’ve got a whole month devoted to celebrating masturbation—“_

_Almost choking on his coffee, Bruce waited a moment to get his breath back before he leveled a gauntleted finger at him. “Never, ever let me hear you say that again. You’re not supposed to even know what it means.”_

_With a decidedly mischievous spark in those blue eyes, Clark focused them with exquisite precision, thin beams of heat shooting out to light the candles. “Make a wish.”_

_“Clark—“_

_“Everybody has a wish, Bruce.”_

_“I don’t know why I humor you,” he grumbled. But he leaned in and thought about it for an instant before he blew the candles out._

_“I do,” Clark said. And he was suddenly right there, one hand cupped along Bruce’s jaw as he angled it just right for him to come in for a kiss. Soft and sweet and chaste, and Bruce really hadn’t expected his wish to come true so soon, or at all really, but he leaned into it, arms going around Clark’s neck. He parted his lips as Clark licked at them—_

_Clark just as abruptly pushed him away, and Bruce opened his eyes, stunned, ready to try and pull his fractured dignity around him, when Clark said, “I’m sorry, there’s a bridge collapsing in Metropolis.”_

_Bruce gave him a shove, urgent, “Go, go.”_

_Clark nodded, pressed a kiss to his forehead, “I’ll be back.” Then he was gone, the air whooshing through the cave, and Bruce was alone._

He had waited. He had gone up to the library and watched the live news coverage of the bridge disaster. Clark had been a constant blur of motion as he stopped the bridge from completely coming apart and rescued people from the icy water. Towards the end, a camera had zoomed in on him kneeling by a badly injured little girl, one he hadn’t gotten to in time. She was smiling, though, as he held her tiny hand and stroked her hair, whispering to her as the EMTs worked desperately in vain. When she finally closed her eyes, he bent his head over her for a moment. When he looked up again, he’d glanced unseeingly in the direction of the camera, eyes bright with tears, with the angry knowledge that he couldn’t save everyone no matter how hard he tried. Part of Bruce had resented that media intrusion – part of him wanted to be in Metropolis to wrap Clark in his arms and try and ease some of that sorrow.

He should have gone. With the rescue operation going on well until dawn, he’d had plenty of time to follow through on his impulse. The power of his reaction had disturbed him too much, though. He had known there was something going on between them, and had acknowledged that at some point he might have to do something about it. A quick fling to get it out of the way and then everything back to business as usual, that had been the plan.

That Clark would take the initiative had never crossed his mind. That Clark would kiss him like they were reinventing kissing and make Bruce forget every other kiss he had ever experienced, had been completely unexpected. That Clark’s pain would make _him_ ache had shocked him to the core. So he had done the only thing he could: made himself unavailable the next time Clark came to call and tried to revise history so the kiss never happened in the first place.

Mostly, he was surprised he’d gotten away with it for this long.

“I’m not saying no now.”

“No,” Clark murmured, thoughtful, and turned to face him on the couch, “I guess you’re not.”

Instead of immediately pouncing, he simply sat there and watched Bruce as the firelight flickered across their faces. Bruce had long thought there were few more glorious sights than Superman as he descended from the sky, radiant in the sunlight. Clark by firelight, however, long lashes casting shadows across high cheekbones, everything about him softened and a thousand times more intimate – that had to come in a really close second.

Bruce wondered what Clark saw. He couldn’t imagine it was anything as amazing. Although the way Clark reached over to touch him, fingers trailing with exquisite tenderness along Bruce’s face, would seem to indicate otherwise.

“Clark—“

“Shh.” Clark hushed him gently. “Just let me look at you, Bruce,” he said. He smoothed a finger along one eyebrow, then the other. “I hardly ever get to just look at you.”

He should object to such careful handling; make it clear to Clark that he was far from fragile and did not require delicate treatment. _He should_ -—but Bruce couldn’t bring himself to protest. Not when his skin tingled from each thoughtful caress. Not when Clark looked at him at him with so much warmth, it felt like he was bathed in gentle sunlight after being too long in the cold, damp dark. 

And he certainly could not find it within him to object when Clark looked at him with all the wonder of someone who saw a treasured, secret dream finally become manifest – even if that utterly terrified him. “I’ll disappoint you,” he said. He was compelled to confess it, but was shocked to hear so much need whispering through his voice, as though he longed for Clark to prove him wrong.

Clark smiled, and shook his head, not believing a word. “Not even if you tried, you goof,” Clark said, and only he could make that sound like an endearment. 

“Didn’t you want to kiss me?” Bruce said. He strove for a debonair nonchalance, but suspected he fell miserably short and landed more in the realm of love-struck loon.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Could you think a little faster?”

Laughter a low rumble in his chest, Clark’s hands cradled Bruce’s head. “I’ve decided.”

Bruce quirked an eyebrow and, infusing a little touch of Batman in his voice, said, “Have you?” Perhaps it was petty, but he took some satisfaction in the effect on Clark. The Man of Steel visibly gulped, his eyes widened, pupils dilating more, and between one breath and another, his mouth was on Bruce’s—hungry and needy and just as desperate as Bruce for this second kiss.

_Yes!_ Bruce crowed, paradoxically triumphant in his surrender.

The couch was big and deep and they shifted and turned on it, pillows tumbling to the carpet as they strove to get as close as humanly possible. Anxious hands pulled at clothing and slid underneath to touch bare skin, moaning around kisses that didn’t stop, not even to draw breath. Bruce discovered he could breathe just fine with his lips still brushing along Clark’s jaw. His tongue darted out to taste soap and cologne—spicy citrus, cinnamon, and something exotic running underneath that was pure _Clark_. 

Necking, they were necking like teenagers, he realized, and smiled at the thought—and groaned the next instant, as Clark’s hand slid down his back and over his ass, and squeezed. Somewhat shocked, Bruce did pull back enough to look into Clark’s face then, and wanted to laugh at Clark’s look of astonished victory, as if he couldn’t believe his own daring. Bruce had to kiss that look, kiss those dazzling blue eyes shut just for a moment. 

He drew back to look at him again, his gaze fixed on the strong chin with its charming cleft. Out of the blue, he was struck with the desire to kiss that cleft, press his tongue against the indentation and savor the trace of salt. How long had he wanted to do that? he wondered. If he reviewed security footage from the Watchtower, would he find himself staring at Clark, fixated on that cleft? The possibility didn’t embarrass him nearly as much it should.

Clark tilted his head back and sighed with luxurious pleasure as Bruce grazed his lips down along his neck to the hollow of his throat. Bruce licked that spot, too, the salt tang of sweat more pronounced there. The taste was familiar, and yet, he was convinced he could detect a hint of something alien in the flavor. Far from putting him off, it only excited him more. He licked and bit at Clark’s lips, already swollen and tender from their kisses, and felt dangerously close to losing control.

Would that be such a terrible thing? Bruce asked himself as he moved back just enough to take in the glorious sight of Clark sprawled along the couch. His suit was rumpled, and his hair mussed; his glasses were long since gone. Flushed and breathing hard, Clark gazed back at him, a shiver trembling through him as Bruce ran curious, careful fingers over the sensitive lips he had so greedily kissed. “You feel this,” he said, a little stunned at the knowledge as it washed over him. “You can feel all of this,” he repeated with something like wonder.

Expression quizzical as he gazed up at him, Clark said, “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re invulnerable; you don’t feel pain,” Bruce murmured, thoughtful, pushing cloth aside to expose a nipple. He lowered his head and licked it, sucked it, and felt it grow hard against his lips. Clark clutched at his hair and groaned, arching up into his touch, and grumbled deep in his throat as Bruce popped back up again. “I was always afraid you couldn’t really feel pleasure, either.”

Clark looked entirely too pleased at that admission. “A bullet doesn’t hurt me, but I can feel its impact on my body,” he said, voice dropped to the softest whisper, the kind reserved for confessing secrets. “I can feel the sun’s warmth on my skin, and the wetness of raindrops.” He brushed Bruce’s hair back, mischief in his smile. “Did you sit around wondering if I could feel this,” he pulled Bruce down against him, “your body hard and hot against mine? Did you, Bruce?”

Fighting not to laugh, Bruce used his firmest voice to tell him, “I certainly did not.” He went on, murmuring low and rough and punctuated with kisses. “Can you really imagine me on monitor duty, thinking about how you would feel in my arms, what it would be like to kiss you and touch you? Do you think I ever went to a meeting and sat there wondering what your lips taste like? If your skin would feel hot and smooth as I touch you, or if I would discover you were ticklish … here?” He danced his fingers across the inside of Clark’s thigh and felt him squirm pleasurably. He settled between Clark’s legs, felt his arousal as he nuzzled along his jaw, his throat. “Can you really believe I’d lie awake in my quarters and imagine you there beside me, hot and naked and wanting me?”

“Bruce, Bruce.” _Let’s go upstairs to bed, right now._ “Alfred’s headed this way.”

Bruce pulled back and stared at him. “Alfred’s headed this way.” That wasn’t what Clark was supposed to say, not even close. Processing the information took longer than it should. “Alfred’s headed this way?”

Clark nodded.

“Alfred’s headed this way…” 

Clark nodded again, and squirmed free, trying to straighten his clothes.

Alfred was headed this way, and while discovering Bruce _inflagrante dilecto_ wouldn’t even warrant a raised eyebrow at this point, Bruce found himself unexpectedly protective of Clark in the present circumstances. For all the teasing, Bruce had a feeling Clark wasn’t quite as daring as he had tried to make out, certainly not to the extent of being blasé about it if Alfred walked in on them. 

Straightening his own clothes only took a moment, and then he helped Clark smooth and tug everything back into place. By the time they were seated at opposite ends of the couch, Bruce’s attention focused on a police report while Clark checked his messages, Bruce was confident Alfred wouldn’t notice anything at all amiss as the library door began to open.

~*~

Alfred discreetly cleared his throat. “Your glasses, I believe, Master Clark?” he said, and held out the black-rimmed spectacles he had discovered jammed between the cushions of the couch. Miraculously, they appeared to be entirely intact.

Clark stared at him, the very embodiment of flustered. “Umm, thank you, Alfred, I, umm, don’t know how they could have gotten there,” he said, and looked everywhere but at Alfred or Bruce.

“It is quite the mystery, sir,” Alfred said, and blithely ignored the pointed look from his young charge—he also overlooked the rather impressive love bite that adorned his charge’s neck. “Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes, if you gentlemen would care to freshen up.”

It was only after they had hastily retreated upstairs that Alfred permitted himself a discreet smile before he returned to the kitchen to check on the deep dish apple pie. Mrs. Kent’s recipe had been most precise…

~*~

  
_That evening in Crime Alley_   


“Preston, didn’t I tell you we should have gone the other way?” The wife—pretty, smartly dressed– wrinkled her nose at what she had just stepped in, and smacked her husband on the shoulder. “Look at this!” She pointed at her expensive designer shoes, now ruined beyond hope. “Do you know how much these cost?”

“I pay the bills, don’t I?” Preston sounded impatient. He looked around at their surroundings, unease in his eyes. Maybe he sensed something; maybe he’d just heard the stories. Whatever it was, he got a firmer grip on his son’s hand and quickened his step. “Come on, Doreen, there’s a street just up ahead.”

A street with people and traffic, where they could find a taxi cab to hail that would whisk them away from this place. If only they could get there. It was just a few feet. They should be able to make it easy. Or, they would have, if Doreen hadn’t caught a heel on a broken, gritty patch of pavement and twisted her foot. She fell, breaking her nails and skinning a knee. Preston helped her up. He had to let go of his son to do that, and the boy stared around the dark and dirty alley with wide, anxious eyes.

Every clank and creak and scrape was loaded with terrifying possibility. Every shadow held the chance of horrors. That’s where the boy spotted it. Deep in that murky darkness, he saw one of those shadows detach from the others, and heard a shuffling scrape across the gravel. He clutched desperately at his father. “Dad…”

Preston and Doreen looked around. They saw it now, too, and all of their squabbles were instantly forgotten. Piles of bills and ruined manicures were insignificant, as they grabbed their son and pulled him along. They were headed for that sanctuary up ahead, that safe haven where a streetlight flickered in the darkness. 

They could feel something behind them, relentlessly following. They shoved the boy ahead of them, yelling, “Run, Davey, run! Davey run!”

Davey ran. He knew he should keep his eyes on the streetlamp, head straight for that refuge, but he heard his mother cry out behind him and had to look back, he had to. He risked one glance over his shoulder and then ran faster, faster, faster than he had ever run in all of his eight years.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The search is on for Davey. First, though, Jim Gordon goes on TV to try and reassure the citizens of Gotham.

_“…and I can assure your viewing audience, Mr. Engle, that the Gotham P.D. is doing everything within our power to capture this killer.”_  
  
“Gordon’s doing well,” Clark said, as he started in on his second piece of pie, still warm enough to melt the slice of cheddar just a bit.  
  
Working on his first serving of the dessert, Bruce nodded. “He didn’t want to take the time, but Mayor Garcia pressured him.” He stared at the small television in the kitchen, and thought he could read the signs of impatience in Jim’s body language. “It might do some good.”  
  
Of course, Engle brought up the inevitable subject of Batman’s association with the police force. Bruce watched more closely as Jim said, _“It’s no secret that Batman is providing assistance to the Gotham P.D., Mr. Engle.”_  
  
 _“Could you provide some specifics, Commissioner? I mean, other than the freedom to intimidate with impunity,” Engle pressed, “what does this vigilante bring to the table?”  
  
Still composed, but with a sharper tone to his voice, Jim said, “Besides a wealth of practical skills and knowledge?”_  
  
Like the proverbial dog with a bone, though, Engle kept at it, wanting to know about Batman’s resources, if Gordon knew his background. Was Batman an ex-cop, ex-military, or CIA? Had some government-sponsored mad scientist created him in a lab? Bruce had heard it all before; the same speculation peppered every article or broadcast report that purported to unravel the mystery of The Batman. At least, Engle didn’t bring up the latest theory to go viral, started by conspiracy geeks who claimed they had evidence proving Batman, Superman, and the entire Justice League were the culmination of a millennia-old plot concocted by the Freemasons and Illuminati to seize control of the world. While lacking any discernible residue of logic, Bruce had to admit that one did at least have creativity going for it.  
  
Jim parried every question, just as dogged in his determination to stay on point and keep the interview about the murders. _“What the citizens of Gotham need to know, Mr. Engle, is that we are all working around the clock to identify and locate this criminal. Batman is invaluable in that pursuit. It’s important that we all remain vigilant, and avoid the kind of media hype,” here, Jim gave Engle a particularly hard look, “that only serves to stir up people’s fear.”_  
  
Of course, Engle went after that, and Bruce tuned the program out for the moment.  
  
He finished his pie, said no to another slice, and relaxed back in the padded kitchen chair, his hands curved around his coffee cup. He found himself struck by the cozy and downright domestic setting. Alfred was putting the dishes in the sink to soak, while Clark sat across from him, still working on the pie. Once upon a time, his inclination would have been to rebel against this comfort, reject it. But that angry, embittered young man, the one who hadn’t wanted a home—this home, in particular—and who thought himself too far removed from his heritage to give a damn, seemed to have vanished somewhere along the way. Good riddance, perhaps, although, Bruce doubted that incarnation was really that far away. He knew that some equivalent scene of blood-spattered pearls clattering over the pavement, while he watched the life fade from another pair of beloved eyes, would bring that vengeful wraith back in a heartbeat.  
  
And he couldn’t even keep Clark entirely safe.  
  
The correct thing to do would be to follow through on his original plan of action. Take Clark to his bed and have that affair—and then send him away. Even though it could break Clark’s heart (he wouldn’t let himself dwell on any collateral damage to his own) and might forever damage their partnership, the trust that had been so hard won and that now flowed so easily between them.  
  
Even so, no matter how painful that would be, it was the correct, the practical thing to do. As he looked across the table and found Clark smiling at him and remembered how it had felt to finally kiss him and hold him in his arm—the sweet triumph that had gleamed in those blue eyes in return, as if Clark had waited all his life to kiss him—Bruce felt his resolve unexpectedly weaken and falter. Doing the impractical had never been so alluring.  
  
Whispered words from long ago echoed in his mind, _“Don’t be afraid,”_ and he reached across the table to rest his hand on Clark’s. A startled look flitted across Clark’s face, but then he smiled, with an intimacy that had never—quite—been there before, and curled his own fingers around Bruce’s.  
  
If Clark looked at him that way now, when all they had done was neck, what would it be like when Bruce did finally take him to bed? Rubbing absently at the spot where Clark’s kisses had marked him, now concealed by a black turtleneck, Bruce found himself unbelievably eager to find out.  
  
Alfred came back to the table with his own cup of coffee, tactfully ignored their clasped hands, and asked Bruce, “Shall you be going out tonight?”  
  
Bruce carefully extracted his fingers from Clark’s gentle grasp and told himself the heat he felt spreading across his face was simply because it was overly warm in the kitchen. “Yes, for a little while. You two could go through the files from GCPD. Start with the reports from 1966 and work back, look for any references to the Grim Reaper killer.”  
  
“We live to serve,” Alfred said, sharing an amused look with Clark. “You believe that may be an earlier soubriquet for this Gravedigger?”  
  
“I think it might. Gordon said that’s what his father called the killer when he struck for the first time back then.” If that really had been the first time—but Bruce wanted to keep that to himself for the time being.  
  
Clark leaned forward, light glinting off his glasses. “We’re sure it’s the same guy? That was a long time ago. He’d be in his sixties today, at least, and the murders have all been pretty physical.”  
  
Alfred gave him a look of mild reproof. “Don’t be too quick to dismiss anyone because of years accumulated, Master Clark. Most especially when one is confronting a psychopathic maniac.”  
  
“Sorry.” Clark shared a look with Bruce now. “Does the name matter?”  
  
Bruce shook his head, not quite ready to share what was troubling him about this killer—not entirely sure he understood it enough to voice it yet, even if he wanted to. “Let’s say it strikes me as a curiosity. Why switch from calling him the Grim Reaper to the Gravedigger?”  
  
“His _modus operandi_ ,” Clark said, one-upping Alfred’s _soubriquet_ , “suggested the new handle. And the press probably loved it.”  
  
“That’s a good point,” Alfred said. “It was the London press of the time who jumped at calling the Whitechapel killer Jack the Ripper to sell more newspapers.”  
  
Their points were perfectly valid, and Bruce didn’t want to waste time fixating on something that, ultimately, might prove to be irrelevant. “You’re right, of course, it’s just…” He shrugged slightly, as they looked at him. “Call it instinct, if you like, but I think it means something.”  
  
“Anyone would think ‘instinct’ was a dirty word,” Alfred said, eyes twinkling over his coffee cup.  
  
Bruce frowned at both of them. “It’s unscientific.”  
  
“Many of the best things in life—“  
  
Clark, intently focused on the television all of a sudden, abruptly hushed them both. “Something’s happening.”  
  
Bruce looked over and saw Jim Gordon answering his phone, watched Jim’s expression grow bleak and pensive. He looked at Clark, whispered, “Can you hear him?”  
  
A swift nod answered him; a grim set to the square jaw told him the nature of the call.  
  
As they watched, Jim closed his phone and got to his feet, shrugging off Mike Engle with a curt, _“Something’s come up; forgive me, but I have to go.”  
  
“Commissioner! Has the Gravedigger struck again?”_  
  
Jim yanked off his microphone and stalked out of the studio, while Engle immediately began tossing out speculations on what may have happened, all of them sensational and bloodthirsty.  
  
Bruce looked at Clark. “What did you hear?”  
  
Hesitant, as though weighing his words carefully, Clark said, “A family visiting Gotham from Central City has disappeared. A husband and wife, Preston and Doreen McIvar, and their eight-year-old son, David.” He watched Bruce absorb that and darted a concerned look at Alfred, just before he dropped the last bomb. “They were last seen near Crime Alley.”  
  
Bruce nodded abruptly, confident his face was as masked as if he wore the cowl, nothing to betray the turmoil of images tumbling through his mind in that instant. He looked back at the television, at Jim being mobbed by reporters outside the studio as he plowed through them all and made for the car that waited for him.  
  
 _Crime Alley_ … Of course, the trail would lead to that dismal place. There was something almost inevitable about it, in fact.  
  
Alfred spoke up, insistent, “Wait for the Commissioner to send for you. They might have just gotten lost.”  
  
Bruce turned to face him, to remind Alfred that he had gone back there, many times, in the intervening years without going to pieces, and was startled to see Clark—no, not Clark: it was Superman sitting at the kitchen table, all of a sudden, never mind the rumpled suit and glasses. It was Superman who held up a hand to quiet Alfred. No one else would ever dare. For a moment, Alfred actually looked taken aback, and who could blame him. While Clark was a frequent and familiar visitor by now, Alfred had only rarely encountered the Man of Steel.  
  
“There’s a chance they could be alive, Bruce,” Clark said, his voice all Superman, too. He didn’t push, didn’t insist; he simply waited on Bruce to decide.  
  
Apparently this was a night of firsts, Bruce reflected, even as he conducted a rapid-fire debate with himself and found it remarkably easy to come to that decision. Eyes locked with Clark’s, he drew a kind of residual strength from the uncompromising support he saw there, and replied with another quick, firm nod. “Find them, if you can,” he said, and thought Clark couldn’t beam more brightly if he’d just won a Pulitzer Prize.  
  
Clark nodded his reply back and stood up. Alfred was treated to another rare sight as, in a blur of motion and color, Clark Kent well and truly vanished, leaving Superman in his stead. “I’ll keep in touch,” he said, and tapped his ear. In the next instant, he was gone.  
  
“That was…” Alfred began, only to flounder.  
  
“Impressive?” Bruce suggested.  
  
“I was going to say uncanny.”  
  
“That too.” Bruce looked at Alfred and let the mask slip for just a second. “It will be all right, Alfred. It’s … just a place.”  
  
Alfred leveled a somber look at him. “We both know better, Master Bruce. But you won’t be alone.”  
  
Managing a smile, Bruce patted him briefly on the shoulder. “I haven’t been alone for a very long time,” he said, and started for the library. “Don’t wait up for us.”  
  
Alfred’s dismissive, “Hah!” trailed after him as he picked out the code on the piano.

~*~

  
  
At least, it wasn’t raining. Jim Gordon supposed that wasn’t much to hang his hopes on, but at this point he would take his good omens where he found them.  
  
Head tipped back, he tracked the streak of red and blue that whooshed by overhead, silhouetted against the Bat Signal for a second. Jim wasn’t entirely sure that was a good sign. Not that he would ever refuse more help, but could it bode well if Batman had called in Superman?  
  
He looked around Crime Alley, all lit up now as every inch was photographed, dusted for prints, and gone over minutely for any scrap of evidence. More officers blocked off the entrances and tried to keep out the press. Questions were shouted out anyway, accompanied by the pop of flashbulbs that added to the illumination. Was it ironic, he wondered, that the only time any kind of light crept into this sliver of Gotham was in the aftermath of a tragedy?  
  
A faint clatter made him look up again. He spotted a black cloaked figure on a fire escape, hugging the darkness. Jim fixed the rusty fire escape with an apprehensive look, fairly positive the whole thing would tear away from the side of the building the instant he set a foot on it—but then sighed and began to climb the steps all the same, ready to jump for it at the first sign of imminent collapse.  
  
“You called in Superman?”  
  
“He has his uses. Fill me in.”  
  
Jim did, telling him the McIvars were in town to visit relatives—the wife, Doreen, had an aunt here; and that Preston McIvar had also arranged for a job interview at Wayne Enterprises. The concierge at their hotel reported Mr. McIvar had asked for recommendations on restaurants in the area, and the family had gone out to dinner at about seven o’clock.  
  
“What restaurant did they pick?” Batman said, gauntleted hands gripping the fire escape railing. Tension rolled off of him, as he looked up and down the alley.  
  
“They had reservations at Delmonaco’s but they never arrived.”  
  
“They took a shortcut.”  
  
Jim nodded, sighed. “That’s what it looks like. I’m sorry.”  
  
Batman gave him a sharp look, sharper than usual, as if searching for hidden meanings. “Hadn’t they heard about the murders?”  
  
“I’m sure they had, but,” Jim gave a slight shrug, “it’s human nature: no one ever thinks it’s going to happen to them.”  
  
“No,” Batman said, something in his manner suddenly very far away. “No, they never do.” His gaze was riveted on one particular spot, nothing to mark it as different from any other, though there had been talk over the years of a memorial plaque. If you had been there, you wouldn’t need a plaque to remember. Jim knew that was another crime scene that would stay with him as long as he lived.  
  
“Was he stalking them, or did he lie in wait here for anyone who chanced to come by?” Batman asked. Jim got the impression he was thinking out loud as much as talking to him.  
  
“No way of knowing right now. I’m not sure we’re going to find mu—” Jim trailed off, realizing he was alone, and shook his head.  
  
His steps ginger, he kept a grip on the railing as he made his way back down the fire escape. On solid ground again, Jim played the beam of his flashlight along the ground as he ventured deeper into the alley, away from the floodlights and hubbub. His eye was caught by an old, peeling advertising poster that extolled the virtues of Wylde’s Tonic for Men—apparently it restored both hair and vigor and was guaranteed to bestow an overall sense of rejuvenation—and Jim crouched down to get a closer look at some dark splotches that were splattered all along the left side of the poster and down across the old brick.  
  
Probably nothing, he thought; probably some mud or something more disgusting that had splashed against the wall ages ago. It was just, now that he looked, really looked close, there was a whole batch of similar spots all along the cracked pavement. Drips and smears, and the more he looked, the more Jim was prepared to swear it was blood. Not fresh, though; no, these spatters had been there long enough to dry. Jim would have liked to believe that had to mean the McIvars were safe and sound, but he knew it wasn’t realistic to make a leap like that on so little evidence. Still, he did feel a certain degree of satisfaction begin to kindle in him, the kind that came from knowing some progress was finally being made.  
  
His foot scuffed against something metallic and he looked down, the flashlight picking out an ancient sewer grate. He nudged it with his foot, the squeaky rasp of corroded metal scraped against pavement and sounded shockingly loud in the alley. An absolute certainty coursed through Jim, as sure as if he’d just been hit by lightning.  
  
“Batman? Batman!” he called out. “ _Batman_!” Damn it, where had he disappeared to this time? Jim wondered. He stood up to shine the flashlight all along the alley, searching out one particular dark figure.

~*~

  
  
As he flew over Robinson Park, Clark tracked the figure he’d spotted as it darted furtively along an alley leading away from the crime scene. He’d lost track of it a few times, as the figure scurried up rickety fire escapes and across rooftops, then back down to the street. It always popped up again, clinging, leech-like, to the shadows as it rushed along on its mad dash across the city. Madness with a method, Clark suspected, and wished the figure would stop under a streetlight long enough for him to get a good look at it.  
  
It never did, though; it never lingered in any spot, and avoided any circle of feeble light cast by streetlamps that looked as if they belonged in some Victorian, gaslight drama. Between that and the fog creeping in from the ocean, all he could tell for certain was gender—male—and that his costume also called to mind that same bygone era. Whether that signified anything or not in Gotham was impossible to know.  
  
The figure scrambled through the park now, hopping from a boulder to a flight of steps and then made a straight dash through a covered bridge that Clark knew was called the Arcade, spanning the river that cut through the park. He hovered above the bridge as he waited for the figure to come out the other end. Seconds ticked by, a full minute. He scanned the bridge, frowning when his x-ray vision couldn’t penetrate. Lead—the arched roof must have lead in it, he realized, and swiftly reversed his position and floated down—just in time to catch a flurry of movement as the figure scuttled over the side of the bridge and down to the embankment, coattails flapping in the air. Another instant, the fog obscuring everything, and the figure was gone as surely as if it had melted right into the rock.  
  
Clark landed on the ground. He scanned the rock, positive there had to be a hidden passage there, and equally certain he’d better let Bruce know about this.

~*~

  
  
Bruce listened to Clark’s report and calculated how long it would take him to reach the park—and debated whether or not to inform Jim Gordon. “Describe everything you noted about this figure,” he said, as he strode along the side street. He would categorically deny that he was anxious to put as much distance as possible between himself and Crime Alley. It was only wise, as Clark had proved, to expand his search outward.  
  
If he found he could breathe somewhat easier the further he got away from that place it was purely coincidental.  
  
 _“I told you, it never stopped long enough for me to get a good look.”_  
  
“He,” Bruce corrected him. “He never stopped.” Bruce frowned, for a moment convinced he’d heard something, a faint banging sound somewhere nearby. “Or don’t you think it’s human?”  
  
A beat, then, _“I don’t know, Bruce. I mean, yes, it’s—he’s human. There was just something about him, that…”_ Clark’s voice trailed off on a frustrated note, as though he was annoyed at himself for not being able to pin it down precisely.  
  
“What?” he pressed. “What did you pick up on?”  
  
Another hesitation, then, something coming together at last, Clark said, _“It was the smell. He—Bruce, he smelled dead.”_  
  
Bruce came to an abrupt stop at the mouth of another alley. “What do you mean, dead?”  
  
 _“I mean … dead. Decayed.”_  
  
Great, wonderful, just what they needed: a murdering revenant on the loose.  
  
Bruce permitted himself a small sigh. “Let’s stick to one thing at a time. Stay there and keep looking for the entrance. I’ll join you as soon as I can.” He would have to tell Jim about the park, but Bruce thought he’d lead up slowly to the possibility of them being on the trail of the walking dead.  
  
He turned, about to head back to Crime Alley, bracing himself for that, when he heard the banging again. Sharp, frantic—- _bang bang bang_ -—and underneath it a small voice desperately whispering, “Help, please help, please help…”  
  
Vaulting a junked car, Bruce ran back to the alley. He forced himself to stay absolutely still as he tried to isolate the sound. There, it was coming from a Dumpster. He skidded to a stop in front of it and grabbed the lid, heaving it back and casting the beam of his flashlight over the interior. It stank, even in this weather, and he didn’t want to dwell on what was jammed in there. He saw movement and reached forward—jerking his hand back when it turned out to be a very fat, very beady-eyed rat that popped up to stare at him.  
  
Had he been wrong? Had he imagined it? No, no there was something else down in there, larger than a rat, and trying to wriggle deeper into the Dumpster out of fear.  
  
Bruce climbed up higher, reached down and felt cloth and warmth, and latched on tight. He pulled and hauled and dragged the boy out of the Dumpster, even as the child squirmed and kicked and struck out at him. “Go ahead,” he murmured, “I can take it. You’re safe now, you’re safe,” he said, over and over. “You’re safe,” he repeated one more time, as the boy finally grew still in his arms.  
  
The boy looked at him, green eyes wide in a face full of summer freckles. “Are you Batman?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
The boy nodded, sniffed, and drew a filthy sleeve across his face. “My name’s Davey.”  
  
“I know,” Bruce said. He carried him back to the street and started down to where Jim Gordon and the others waited. “We’ve been looking for you.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Superman goes spelunking and finds some skeletons; Batman and Gordon join him on the beach where he has captures their quarry. Or so it seems...

Clark would have liked to have been there when Bruce found the missing boy, just to see the look on his face. **THE DARK KNIGHT SMILES!** —that would be the headline, if anyone snapped such a one in a billion photograph. Jimmy Olsen would give his bow ties for a chance at a shot like that. While Clark regretted that such a mythic photograph would never exist, he found it easy to create it in his mind.  
  
There might not even have been an actual smile, but Clark could hear it in his voice as Bruce reassured Davey. Finding the boy alive might make Crime Alley a little bit easier to bear for the immediate future. At least, Clark hoped so. He understood Alfred’s concern about Bruce going back there. Some part of Alfred, he suspected, would always see Bruce as that eight-year-old whose world was so brutally shattered. Instinctively, Alfred would always want to try and shield Bruce from it. Clark did, too; leaving Bruce to face down his demons never got easy, but if he had learned nothing else in these years, it was to trust that Bruce knew how much he could handle.  
  
Although, it was equally true that Bruce would push himself right to the edge and be poised to go on over, before he would make that concession.  
  
Sometimes, Clark envied that determination to face everything straight on and never back down, no matter how much it hurt. Sometimes, he kind of wanted to smack people when they said Batman wasn’t a real superhero, because he didn’t have any powers. Of course, Clark had been skeptical himself, at first. The primary reason he had wanted to meet Batman in the first place was to ascertain just how much was fact, and how much fiction, in all the stories filtering out of Gotham. How could a mere mortal do all the things credited to Batman? The answer was simple, of course: Batman was no mere mortal. It hadn’t taken long for Clark to realize that this frustrating, maddening individual was the most extraordinary being he had ever met.  
  
For a long time, he had tried to pretend what he felt for the other man was only admiration. An inconsequential crush, at most. After all, there had been times early on when he hadn’t even _liked_ Batman, with his high-handed, ruthless approach to leadership—frequently focused on demolishing Superman’s plans as he pointed out every single flaw and failure to think something all the way through, _“I’m sorry, but I hadn’t realized invulnerable and boneheaded were the same thing.”_  
  
Was it any wonder Wally had started a pool on which of them would punch out the other first?  
  
He wondered if anyone had ever thought to start a pool in case of a completely different kind of outcome and smiled at the thought.  
  
He could touch Bruce now, the way he had wanted to for such a long time. If Bruce was feeling wrung out by the case, by this visit to Crime Alley and the painful memories it stirred up, Clark could wrap his arms around him and try to make it better. He hadn’t expected that, and certainly hadn’t planned on it. Slipping into the library, Clark had only hoped not to wake Bruce up, as he’d tucked a blanket around him and sat there with Bruce’s head on his lap. He had felt terribly daring—and worried Bruce would banish him from the Manor for life when he woke up.  
  
So maybe invulnerable and boneheaded kind of were the same thing, because Clark sure hadn’t seen Bruce’s complete one-eighty coming. The funny thing was he had a feeling Bruce had been blindsided right along with him. There was something wonderful in that knowledge, since it wasn’t often anything ever caught Bruce by surprise.  
  
The fondly remembered voice was suddenly real, acerbic as ever, and right in his ear. _“Are you in pursuit of our quarry, or are you taking a nap?”_  
  
“In pursuit,” Clark said. “It was a little bit of a tight squeeze through the passageway I found in the rock.” Not to mention faintly embarrassing as he’d pictured himself getting stuck there.  
  
 _“Really? I couldn’t tell from all the huffing and puffing.”_  
  
Clark clamped down on any retort, reminded himself he was crazy in love with this aggravating person, and said, “I’m in a small, natural cavern, with a passageway branching off from it.”  
  
 _“Which direction?”_  
  
“North, northeast,” Clark said, zeroing in on the rapid footsteps of their person of interest. He followed him into the tunnel, glad its breadth and height was more accommodating to him—well, marginally, he amended, as his shoulders brushed along both sides of the passage at a particularly narrow point, and he was forced to turn sideways for several feet, ducking his head so it wouldn’t scrape the ceiling.  
  
 _“Towards the shoreline, then,”_ Bruce said, a thoughtful note running through his voice. _“That might be one of the tunnels bootleggers used during Prohibition days,”_ he added, then called out, _“Gordon!”_  
  
“What’s going on?”  
  
 _“Just keep talking, tell me everything. Do you have him in sight?”_  
  
“I have him in hearing. The rock’s too dense for my x-ray vision to penetrate very far, especially with the target in constant motion.” Clark moved on, glad to provide a running commentary. Not that he was claustrophobic or anything, but he welcomed the distraction. Otherwise, he might be inclined to dwell too much on being underground, confined in this narrow, winding passage; he wasn’t afraid of the dark, but he wasn’t especially fond of it, either.  
  
“A bat just went by me,” he said, and jerked his hand back, as he felt something crawl over it. “You should know there are centipedes here and really big spiders,” he said, as he watched a particularly bloated one scuttle into a crevice.”  
  
 _“You’re Superman, you can’t be afraid of bugs.”_  
  
“Fine. Can I be creeped out by them?” He sighed, filtering out the sounds—the _drip, drip, drip_ of water; the skreek of another bat. He gradually dialed everything down until the sound of their suspect’s swift retreat was foremost. Whoever he was, the man’s breathing was labored, his heart going like a jackhammer in his chest. Clark thought of the scent of death he had detected. It was there now, a sickly sweet aroma, slightly more pronounced in these close and airless confines as it mingled with the smell of wet rock, earth, and mildew. He was about to pass that observation along as well, when his step faltered, and he found himself treading air.  
  
 _“Superman?”_ Bruce’s voice was sharp with an urgent note. _“Superman?”_  
  
“I’m okay. Just missed my step.” He floated down to the floor of the cave and looked back up a short flight of narrow, irregular steps. Like the rest of the tunnel, the steps had been carved out by hand. They were almost worn away completely in some spots, and slick with a film of slime—footprints had smeared the slime in spots. Since Superman probably wasn’t supposed to go ick just because of some slime, either, Clark simply reported the steps and their condition. When this was all over, though, he was going to treat himself to a nice, long bask in the sun.  
  
“I can smell the sea now,” he said, “and there’s a breeze.” He welcomed that change in atmosphere, however slight, and decided he could spare a moment to soak up the refreshing draft. He scanned the chamber for any other useful details to pass along—and tilted his head with curiosity as he discovered several wooden crates stacked up in one corner. They were covered with dust and cobwebs, the wood rotted away in spots to reveal—“B, did you say this place might have been used by bootleggers?”  
  
 _“Yes. Why, what have you found?”_  
  
“Booze,” Clark said, pulling out a dusty bottle, “lots of it. Irish whiskey, Scotch, brandy,” he went on as he checked more bottles, “some gin, and…” He frowned and looked again more closely, as a shaft of moonlight worked its way through some crannies in the rock to fall across a pile of bones casually discarded in a corner. Skulls grinned up at him, the eye sockets empty. The skeletons had been picked clean, although scraps of torn and tattered clothing still clung to them. There was a fedora tumbled nearby, its brim gnawed and ragged. A straw boater, also chewed up, sat at a jaunty angle on one skull. A bony hand still clutched a revolver, while a gold wedding ring encircled another skeletal finger, and a wristwatch--its hands frozen at half past five--dangled from a wrist bone. “B, I,” he hesitated another moment, not sure how to describe the macabre scene, “I think the bootleggers are still here, too.”  
  
 _“What?”_  
  
“I found some bones, skeletons. They look like they’ve been here awhile,” he said, and half-listened in as Bruce began to catch Jim Gordon up on everything.  
  
It was just the atmosphere, the uncanny scene laid out before him, but Clark couldn’t quite suppress a shudder as he watched a plump rat scamper over the bones and perch atop a skull, gimlet eyes staring back at him as if wanting to know what the hell Clark was doing here. He shooed the rat off, but only made it retreat into another corner, where it continued to peer at him with those brazen, beady eyes.  
  
 _“Superman,”_ Bruce addressed him again, _“as you say, those bones have been there awhile. Don’t lose our suspect. Gordon and I will be there in ten minutes.”_  
  
Clark could hear Jim saying something about speed limits, and Bruce blithely ignoring the warning. He experienced a sudden need to escape his own constraints, and told Bruce, “I’m going airborne. I can locate the suspect better from the air.”  
  
Bruce agreed, and moments later, Clark was outside, soaring along the shoreline, a sense of exhilaration burning through him now that he was free of that dank, dark, terrible cavern.  
  
~*~  
  
Cruising along the shoreline at low altitude, Clark wished he could be here under different circumstances. Maybe, it was because he grew up in landlocked Kansas, but he always enjoyed any chance he got to go to the beach. Even with Metropolis right on the coast, that opportunity didn’t come along often enough, and seldom just for pleasure.  
  
He would love to stroll along a stretch of beach like this with Bruce. Both of them would be barefoot; the surf would splash over their feet and the sand would be cool and squishy between their toes. They would stop right here to look out over the water. Clark would stand behind Bruce, arms looped around his waist, as they looked out over the water and admired the way it reflected the moon and stars. As the lighthouse on Wayne’s Point cast its beam out over the ocean, Bruce would press back against him and Clark would lower his head to nuzzle Bruce’s throat, and then—  
  
“Come back! You can’t leave me here!” The desperate sobs, bordering on hysterical, shattered the quiet. Clark instantly left off his romantic reverie to search for the source.  
  
The strange figure he had been pursuing was there on the shoreline. Even as Clark began his descent, the man waded out into the water and continued to shriek, “Come back! Come back!” He was hip-deep in the water now. Seemingly caught between anger and despair, the man wept and howled curses and showed no sign of halting his progress into the ocean.  
  
Clark scanned the dark water for any trace of another party. Out past Wayne’s Point, there was an ocean liner, beyond that an oil tanker. He drew his focus closer in, the rhythmic _splish-splash_ of oars dipping in and out of the water alerting him first. Right at the moment he caught sight of a rowboat with a dark-cloaked figure working the oars, the other man rent the air with one last desolate yelp before he slipped under the water. Clark switched priorities on a dime and swooped down into the water to catch hold of the man and bring him back up. The icy water numbed his fingers and made it difficult to get hold of the man, but finally he caught him and as the man coughed and sputtered, struggling against him, Clark flew him to the shore.  
  
He was just setting the man down when the Tumbler jolted down from the road and ploughed to a stop amid a spray of seawater and sand. Even as ocean spray and sand rained down, Bruce leapt from the vehicle and charged toward Clark. Jim Gordon, looking as if his wild ride with Batman might have taken ten years off his life, followed at a more sedate pace.  
  
“This is him?” Bruce said.  
  
Clark nodded and pushed wet hair out of his eyes. He knew Bruce and Jim wouldn’t like what he had to tell them. “He’s _one_ of them,” he said, and watched the grim knowledge sink in.  
  
Jim spoke first. “What does that mean?”  
  
“I’m sorry, Commissioner, but I think we’re looking for two murderers.”  
  
Bruce, of course, kept everything short and sweet. “Explain.”  
  
Clark did, straining his vision once more to penetrate the inky night as he reached the part about the rowboat. “I lost sight of the rowboat when I rescued this one,” he concluded, and indicated the man still sprawled on the ground. “I’m sorry; I don’t know where it went.”  
  
“That’s all you saw?” Bruce demanded, right in his face. “Just a figure in a cloak?”  
  
“It’s all I had time for.” Clark hated the defensive note in his voice. Maybe Bruce could have worked out how to save one man while pursuing another at the same time. Clark could only see one option. If he had screwed up, so be it, but he wasn’t going to apologize for saving a life.  
  
“Perhaps it was coincidence,” Jim said, seemingly more to diffuse the tension he might have sensed than stating a real possibility.  
  
Bruce stepped back, offering a brief touch to Clark’s elbow in apology. “That would seem unlikely,” he said, and looked down at their prisoner.  
  
As they had talked, the man had been unable to keep still. He scrabbled at the ground and crawled along it in his determination to escape. Clark moved to block his way. A claw-like hand latched onto his ankle as if to shove him out of the way. Frustrated gargles issued from the man’s throat as this proved futile. The look of that hand, the skin discolored and spotted, the skin so shriveled it was more like a claw than a hand, made Clark profoundly uncomfortable. The sensation was almost painful.  
  
Eyes narrowed, Bruce crouched down and reached out to pry the man’s fingers away from Clark’s boot. He turned the man over in one swift move—and it was a credit to his training that he didn’t echo Clark and Jim’s shocked intake of breath at their first good look at the man.  
  
“Mother of God,” Jim whispered. “When you said walking dead, I thought you were kidding.”  
  
“I never kid,” Bruce said.  
  
Walking dead was about right. Although crawling, almost dead, might be more correct in this instance, as he continued to inch along the wet ground in his determination to escape, like a stampeding snail.  
  
Upright, he would have been about medium height. If he had ever filled out the clothes he wore—clothes that did indeed look a hundred years old, not just in their styling but from the worn and threadbare appearance, patched many times and not washed recently—then once upon a time this man had possessed a solid, stocky physique. Now, he was nearly as skeletal as the bodies back in the cave. Dirty white hair straggled down his collar. It was difficult to tell if he was truly grinning at their shock, or if his lips were simply drawn back in the rictus of death. And he reeked, of sweat and a long unwashed body, and of that sweet and rotting decay of the dead.  
  
The Gravedigger, indeed. He looked as if he had crawled out of one himself.  
  
“What are we going to do with him?”  
  
“Arkham?” Jim suggested. “I don’t think he’d do well in lockup downtown.”  
  
Batman nodded. He looked at Clark. “Will you carry him?”  
  
“Of course.” Just as soon as he got over his squeamishness. Feeling ashamed of himself for that, Clark reached for their prisoner—just as the man rolled over and flung a fistful of sand straight at Bruce and Jim. As they instinctively raised their arms to shield their faces, and Clark turned to make sure they were all right, the man scrambled to his feet and fled—straight for the edge of the cliff that jutted out over a rocky stretch of beach.  
  
Clark flew after him. He reached out to catch him as the man teetered right on the brink, arms stretched out to either side as he flailed there. His foot slipped in the loose dirt and gravel and he started to go over. Clark moved closer, reaching out to catch hold of the flapping tails of the man’s frockcoat. The rotten fabric began to rip. Clark shifted for another hold. More fabric ripped and tore away and he was clutching air as the man plummeted toward the water-splashed, jagged rocks below. Clark…wobbled, just for an instance, as he flew down and reached for him again. That instant’s distraction was enough. All Clark caught was another handful of disintegrating cloth. Cackling at some great, cosmic joke, the man crashed into the rocks. Clark hovered over him, one last fragment of cloth clutched in his fist.  
  
After a moment he looked up, at Bruce and Jim staring down at him. He looked at the shattered body, scanned it with his x-ray vision, and looked back up at them. He shook his head and watched Jim slump, even as Bruce slammed a fist into the ground hard enough to rattle loose more fragments of gravel that pattered down on the saw-toothed rocks like rain.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gotham's playboy prince comes to the police station with his friend, Clarkie, to find out what's going on, and colors with Davey MacIvar and share Gray Ghost memories. Also, Jim Gordon knows how to keep a secret.

_1:30 A.M._  
  
Jim Gordon stared, bleary-eyed at the clock, and sank down in a chair at one of the squad room desks. He took the cup of strong, black coffee Detective Stephens handed him and slugged down a mouthful. “Anything on the McIvars yet?”  
  
Stephens shook his head. “We’re still combing Crime Alley, and going over the route Superman gave us.” Stephens stumbled over that, just for a moment. Like a lot of people, Stephens was still getting used to the idea of not just Batman, but Superman and all the other heroes. “Nothing yet. The M.E. says not to expect anything on Son of Solomon Grundy anytime soon, either.”  
  
 _Son of Solomon Grundy…_ That’s the name that had begun circulating among the first responders as they had gathered at the beach to retrieve the killer’s body and sweep the area for any forensic evidence. It was the usual cop humor, the need to bleed off tension and strong emotion in some fashion that didn’t include bashing someone’s face in or discharging firearms. Jim didn’t blame them. He hoped the press wouldn’t get hold of it, though. The last thing this city needed was another zombie scare, much less the knowledge that there was still a killer out there.  
  
Jim still wanted to think Superman had made a mistake; that the figure he’d glimpsed in a rowboat didn’t have a connection to the murders. He could tell Batman believed his friend, though, and that was good enough for Jim.  
  
The last he’d seen of them, Batman was headed off to wherever he went, with the evidence he had gathered. While Superman had flown off over the ocean, colorful form soon concealed in the fog as he searched for any trace of the second suspect.   
  
“How’s the boy doing?” Jim asked, looking across the squad room. David McIvar was over there, telling his story one more time to a police psychiatrist. The boy had been cleaned up and given a clean bill of health at the hospital, before they sent him back here to wait for his aunt. Jim couldn’t say he felt very good about turning the boy over to a woman who couldn’t be found at home at this time of night. “Any word on the aunt yet?  
  
“The kid’s holding up. Last I heard they found a friend of the aunt’s who said she might be out of town.”  
  
Well that was just great. And now what was going on? Jim looked over as some commotion broke out in the corridor, some of the press making it inside, flashbulbs popping as they shouted questions at the figure that made his way along the hallway and breezed into the squad room.  
  
“Mr. Wayne! Mr. Wayne! Are you offering a reward? Are you offering your home to the boy? Mr. Wayne…!”  
  
Bruce Wayne waved amiably at everyone, failed to answer any question, and headed straight for Jim. “Inspector Gordon! How are you? Clarkie’s been telling me all about this terrible business and I wanted to come straight here and offer any help I can. You know Clarkie, right?”  
  
Jim bit his lip to keep from smiling and was glad of the distraction offered by ‘Clarkie.’ He did recognize Clark Kent, the rather large young man at Bruce Wayne’s shoulder, a reporter from Metropolis. In rumpled clothes, and with thick-rimmed glasses that kept sliding down his nose, it was easy to overlook the slump-shouldered figure next to the buoyant ostentation of Gotham’s Prince. No doubt that was the idea.  
  
"We’ve met,” he said. “It's very good of you to take the trouble to come down here, Mr. Wayne--"  
  
"Not at all. It's a terrible business. Clarkie tells me there have been a bunch of other murders. Is that right?"  
  
"I'm afraid it is, Mr. Wayne. It's been in the news quite a bit."  
  
"Has it? Well it sounds like a dreadful business. I certainly hope you're doing something about it."  
  
Jim bit his lip again."We are doing our very best, Mr. Wayne. I assure you."  
  
"I'm glad to hear to it, Inspector. You'll have my full support in your reelection."  
  
"I'm appointed, Mr. Wayne. There's no election process."  
  
"Really? That doesn't sound right. I'll have to ask Clarkie to explain it to me."  
  
"Yes, you should do that."  
  
"Is there anything I can do around here?"   
  
Jim looked at David McIvar, left on his own now and looking more and more like a frightened eight-year-old. “Well, there's a young fellow over there who could use some company."  
  
"Don't say another word, Inspector. I'm all over it."  
  
Yes, Jim imagined he would be. He watched with a mix of amusement and remembered sorrow as Bruce Wayne went over to introduce himself to the boy. After all, there was no one in this squad room better qualified to understand how David McIvar felt right now.  
  
~*~  
  
“Hi!” Bruce indicated the empty chair at the table. “Mind if I sit here?”  
  
David shook his head, intent on his coloring. Someone had found him a big box of crayons, mostly complete and unbroken, and a Mickey Mouse coloring book. David was currently at work coloring Mickey’s gloves orange.  
  
“Aren’t Mickey’s gloves supposed to be white?”  
  
“I like orange better.”  
  
Well, it was certainly striking, especially as David went on to color Mickey’s body blue.  
  
“Could I have a page to color?”  
  
David gave him a long look. “You’re kind of big to be coloring.”  
  
Voice confidential, Bruce said, “You know, I hear that all the time, but I sneak around and do it anyway.”  
  
David considered this information, and thoughtfully looked through the book. After much weighty deliberation, he tore out a page and handed it to Bruce. “Here, you can have Goofy,” he said, and moved the crayon box within easy reach.  
  
“Thank you.” Bruce contemplated Goofy, examined the crayons, and selected a purple one. He started in on Goofy’s hat. David craned his neck to get a good look and nodded his approval at this odd adult sharing his avant garde approach to coloring. “My name’s Bruce, by way.”  
  
“I’m David.”  
  
They colored in companionable silence for a little while. Mickey wound up with green pants to go with the orange and blue, while Goofy was a rainbow of purple, red, yellow, and turquoise. As he was putting the finishing touches to Goofy’s shoes (turquoise), Bruce said, “It’s kind of scary waiting here, isn’t it?”  
  
David shrugged, seemingly intent on finding another picture to color. He settled on one of Donald Duck and reached for a crayon. It looked like Donald’s white feathers were going to be canary yellow.  
  
“It’s just, I remember waiting right here when I was your age.” Finished with Goofy, Bruce turned the page over and reached for a black crayon. He started to draw on the blank page, Goofy’s cheerful colors bleeding through a bit as unusual accents to the shadows.  
  
David gave him a thoughtful, sideways look. “How come you were here? Were you in trouble?”  
  
Bruce mentally braced himself. If he wanted David to talk to him, he had to be prepared to be honest in return. “No, I wasn’t in trouble. My parents and I had been out to a show and were just leaving the theater when this man came up to us. He had a gun, and he wanted my parent’s money and jewelry.”  
  
As he took some time to digest that, David had a look at Bruce’s drawing. It was a minimalist depiction of Crime Alley. Shadows and tall buildings; a family of three at one end, a dark figure opposite them, arm stretched out toward them. The gun was just a smudged suggestion of menace.  
  
“Were you scared?”  
  
“Pretty scared. You see that man?” Bruce pointed out Jim Gordon. “He’s the one who found me and brought me here.” Jim and Clark were hovering close enough to overhear them, even without the aid of superpowers.  
  
“Yeah?” David flipped Donald Duck over and took the black crayon from Bruce. He had to sharpen it, as Bruce had worn it down quite a bit. “Batman found me,” he said, hunched forward as he drew.  
  
“Wow. That must have been creepy.”  
  
David shook his head. “Uh-uh. It was pretty cool. He’s not a bit scary.”  
  
“No? Not even a little bit?”  
  
“Well,” David pondered that, drawing furiously, “maybe he’s scary to the bad guys. He was real nice to me, though.”  
  
Not sure how to react to that, Bruce felt embarrassed –and annoyed at the smiles he was sure he’d spot on Clark and Jim’s faces. He focused more sharply on the task at hand. “Well, that’s good. You’d probably been through enough for one night already, huh?”  
  
“Yeah,” David said, and nodded with feeling. Elbows propped on the table, he asked, “Did that policeman find your mom and dad?” He didn’t look at Bruce, all his attention was fixed firmly on his drawing.  
  
Bruce looked over at Jim, remembering the look on Jim’s face as he had entered that alley to find Bruce kneeling by his parents as their blood seeped along the pavement. Among all the memories that crowded back from that night, one of the few that didn’t hurt was the look of compassion Jim had given him, the quiet kindness that had sought to protect Bruce from the brutal violence even though it was much too late.  
  
Neither of them could save that boy from so long ago, not even Superman could, but there was still a chance for David. There had to be a chance.  
  
“He did find them. He kept me safe.” It wasn’t a lie, just an omission of bleak details. David needed to hang onto that belief in the possibility, hang onto hope as long as he could. “Are they looking for your mom and dad?”  
  
“Uh-huh. We,” David hesitated a moment, then continued, “we’re not from here. We’re visiting from Central City. We were going out to dinner and took a shortcut through this big, creepy alley.” He looked down at his drawing, a Rorschach scribble of darkness, with the buildings like broken teeth. David had used a pink crayon to represent his mother, brown for his father, and green to symbolize himself. The family group was facing outward, huddled close together, and almost off the edge of the paper David had drawn a street lamp that cast a faint yellow glow of safety. Behind them, a claw-like hand emerged from the ground. Symbolic, or a literal representation? Bruce wondered.  
  
He hated to make the boy go over everything again. He remembered, though, how choked and smothered he had felt, and the way everyone fell silent when he walked into a room, so anxious that he be protected from having to relive the horror. It had only been when he had confessed his complicity in the crime to Alfred, told him that it was his fault his parents had been in that alley because he had been frightened by the opera, that some of the weight had lifted. Remembering wasn’t the worst part. Being told to forget, that was the hard part.  
  
“Can I see?” Bruce indicated the drawing. David slid it across the table to him. “It’s pretty creepy, all right. What’s this?” he asked, and pointed to that hand. There was something about the hand that, even if this still scene, this crude drawing, made you think it was groping around and was about to wrap bony fingers around your ankle and yank you down into the abyss.  
  
David frowned as he looked at it. “I don’t know. I heard something scraping around, like it wanted to come up from under the ground.”  
  
And Jim Gordon had discovered an old manhole cover right about there. A cover that Jim thought had been moved recently and might have been surrounded by a spatter of blood drops.  
  
“You didn’t see anything, though?”  
  
“Not _there_ , not right _then_. I,” David halted again and shot Bruce a wary look, as if he suspected Bruce wouldn’t believe what he had to say. “I thought I saw something in the shadows, there.” He stabbed a finger at a point where Bruce knew there was an old brick wall, the brick chipping away. An ancient poster was plastered there, from around the turn of the last century, touting the attributes of some snake oil elixir. “It was like…” David chewed his lip, less concerned with what anyone else thought now, than with finding the right words. “It was like one shadow split off from another,” he said, and looked over to see what Bruce thought of that.  
  
Bruce wasn’t sure what he thought. “Someone was hiding in the shadows?”  
  
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know.” As if his day was finally starting to catch up with him, David got caught up in a massive yawn. “Sorry,” he said, a hand raised to belatedly cover his mouth. “It’s kind of been a really long day.”  
  
Bruce smiled. “I’ll bet.” Not sure it would help, not sure it was even appropriate, Bruce found himself asking, “Do you know why we fall, David?”  
  
Predictably, David gave him a baffled look. “Huh?”  
  
“That’s what my father asked me one time, when I’d fallen down an old well and broken my arm.”  
  
“Did it hurt?”  
  
“A lot. It was really scary, too. But I knew he’d find me, somehow.”  
  
“What was the answer?”  
  
“I didn’t know, not then. Later, he told me that we fall so that we can learn to get back up again.”  
  
David turned that over, likely only able to grasp the surface meaning right now, just as Bruce had all those years ago. If David was lucky, if this was the worst thing that ever happened to him and everything came out right, maybe he would never have cause to confront any of the other meanings.  
  
“Did you get back up?”  
  
“Eventually.”  
  
“Do you still fall down?”  
  
“A _lot_ , and I get back up every time, even when it’s really hard.” Sometimes there was even a hand reaching down to help him, he thought, and looked over at Clark and Jim again.  
  
“I was afraid I’d fall down,” David confessed, “when I was running away in the alley.”  
  
“But you didn’t.”  
  
David shook his head. “No, I didn’t fall, but…” He bit his lip and looked at Bruce like this was a huge secret. “I didn’t tell the policemen everything. They wanted to know if I saw anything and I told them I just ran for the light, like my mom and dad told me. That I never looked back.”  
  
“But you did?”  
  
David nodded. “Just for a second.”  
  
“What did you see?”  
  
“I…” David chewed his lip some more as he sorted through descriptions. “Did you ever see _The Gray Ghost and the Keeper of the Crypt_?”  
  
Bruce blinked in surprise, not expecting that. “I have, yes. You saw something that looked like the Keeper?”  
  
David nodded. “Not the glowing red eyes and all, but that’s how he was dressed.”  
  
A dark-cloaked figure, Clark had said—or swathed in a monk’s habit, like the Keeper of the Crypt? Close enough, close enough. “Why didn’t you want to tell the police that?”  
  
“They’re all grownups, they wouldn’t believe me. They’d think I was all confused and stuff.”  
  
“You weren’t, though.”  
  
David shook his head with definite authority.  
  
“Would it be okay if I tell them for you?”  
  
“Well,” David stifled another yawn, “I guess. They might not believe you, either.”  
  
“You never know.”  
  
David nodded and yawned again, and scrubbed at his face in his bid to stay awake. “Some policemen went to find my aunt Jessie,” he explained. “I’m supposed to stay with her until they find my mom and dad.”  
  
“Where does your aunt Jessie live?”  
  
“I don’t know. My mom said she worked nights at some restaurant, though.” David screwed up his face as he tried to remember the name. “The Ice Cube? I don’t think it’s a nice place.”  
  
“How come?”  
  
David shrugged. “I heard Mom say it was skeevy.” Confidential again, he said, “I don’t think she likes Aunt Jessie much.”  
  
If Aunt Jessie’s connection to the Iceberg Lounge went beyond waitressing, Bruce thought he might be a bit dubious as well. Her name wasn’t one he immediately connected to the Penguin and his activities, however, for whatever that was worth.  
  
As if on cue, another commotion broke out in the corridor as a pair of uniformed officers bypassed the reporters and escorted a pretty young woman into the squad room. She was petite and redheaded, wearing a black cloth coat over her waitress uniform. While she gave off the impression this wasn’t the first time she had been in a police station, she also didn’t ring any bells. She might not be an ideal guardian for David, but Bruce decided she would do for the little bit of time necessary.  
  
Her concern for her nephew, as Jim explained everything to her, as well as her brother and sister-in-law rang true as well. She was inclined to hold the missing Doreen and her, “jumped up ways,” for whatever had happened, but appeared to restrain herself from saying anything more for the sake of the boy. She wasn’t crazy about the idea of the GCPD putting her and the boy up at a hotel, with round-the-clock protection, though. “What about my job? I can’t afford to take any time off.”  
  
“Ah,” Jim looked over at Bruce, “perhaps Mr. Wayne could be of some help?”  
  
The way Jessie looked him up and down as Bruce stepped forward, you could practically hear the _ch-ching_ of a cash register as she tallied up the cost of his wardrobe alone. It was clear she recognized him and was dying to know how he was mixed up in everything. Jim telling her that he was a concerned citizen satisfied her for the moment.  
  
“I’ll have a private word with your employer,” very private, “and arrange something, Miss McIvar.”  
  
“You better be prepared to make it worth his while.”  
  
“Oh, believe me, I will,” he said, with Brucie’s breezy assurance that the whole world waited to accommodate him.  
  
She looked fairly dubious about that working, but didn’t raise any further objections. That David was just about out for the count by then, half-dozing across the table, was a likely deciding factor for her. “Well, if we’re doing this, we better get to it. Poor kid looks like he’s about had it.” She glanced around at all their faces. “I don’t suppose anybody thought to feed him? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Somebody want to give me a hand here?” she said, as she moved to gather up David and his things.  
  
One of the patrolmen, Parkins, stepped forward to pick him up. “I got him, ma’am. Lead the way.”  
  
As they passed, David woke up enough to look sleepy-eyed at Bruce and give him a high-five. “Thanks for telling me about your parents.”  
  
“My pleasure. I’ll be waiting to hear good news about yours.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
Bruce held up the picture David had drawn. “Is it okay if I keep this?”  
  
David yawned widely and said, “Sure,” and dropped his head to Patrolman Parkins’s big shoulder, already half-asleep as he was carried out via a route that would bypass the reporters camped outside.  
  
“Oh, Inspector Gordon,” Bruce offered the drawing, “I thought you might want this. It seems to me there might be some clues in it somewhere.”  
  
“Yes,” Jim took it from him, examined it thoughtfully, “there might be.”  
  
“Well, Clarkie and I should probably be going. If you hear anything about the parents, you’ll let me know?”  
  
“Day or night, you have my word.”  
  
Bruce nodded and dug a card out of pocket. He handed it to Jim. “That’s my _private_ number, if you can’t reach me any other way.”  
  
Jim looked at the card, looked at him, and nodded rather gravely as he carefully tucked it away in his wallet. “You’ll hear as soon as I do.”  
  
“Thank you. Oh, I don’t know if it’s important,” Bruce paused halfway out the door, “but the boy said something he saw tonight reminded him of his favorite cartoon, _The Gray Ghost and the Keeper of the Crypt_. Have you ever seen it?”  
  
“I can’t say I have, Mr. Wayne.”  
  
“You should, you really should.”  
  
“I’ll bear that in mind, Mr. Wayne,” Jim said, as he escorted them out past the reporters and down to the waiting Lamborghini.  
  
~*~  
  
As he watched the outrageously expensive sports car vanish into the night – Clark Kent behind the wheel and scrupulously obeying the speed limit – Jim considered the drawing, the tip about the cartoon, and what he had been able to overhear of the boy’s conversation with Bruce Wayne. Overall, he felt only moderately more enlightened than before. There was confirmation of a second killer, unwelcome but important to know, but not too much more.  
  
Another visit, by daylight, to Crime Alley was definitely in order, however. And he just might find time somewhere in between everything else to filch his son’s DVD of that cartoon. Vital evidence had turned up in stranger places.  
  
Head tipped back, Jim looked up at the clear, cloudless sky. A few stars were visible, outshining the streetlights. He’d like to think the storm was clearing. Experience told him not to count on it, however.  
  
~*~  
  
Hours later, however, Jim found himself balanced precariously on the edge of hope. Quite a bit of that was because of no sleep and practically mainlining caffeine, but some of it, a _lot_ of it, was because he had a rare chance to witness a happy ending. There weren’t a lot of those on this job.  
  
He watched as Preston and Doreen McIvar, wrapped in blankets, were helped into the back of an ambulance. They were shaken up by their ordeal, but nothing worse, and even that began to ebb at the news their son was safe. _This_ was a memory he would store up for a long time. One he would go to some other bleak day, when it looked like everything was lost.  
  
He looked up as a few clouds scudded across the pre-dawn sky. There was someone else who needed to share this, and after a brief deliberation Jim took a business card from his pocket. He’d overheard Stephens one time, talking about how his girlfriend had fallen all over Bruce Wayne at some event and was on Cloud 9 because she had gotten his phone number. When she called the number, however, she found herself being asked to place an order at Da Vinci’s Pizzeria down on 4th. There was every chance he would be diverted as well and find himself speaking to the night watchman down at Younger’s Bowling Alley. Worth a shot, though, Jim decided, and punched in the number.  
  
It took three rings for the phone to be picked up at the other end. The voice that answered, roughened by sleep, was strangely familiar. “Inspector Gordon?”  
  
“The parents are safe. We found them hiding out at an old waterfront warehouse.”  
  
There was a brief pause to digest that information. “They’re unharmed?”  
  
“Shaken up and cold, but no, nothing worse.”  
  
“Does the boy know?”  
  
“Not yet. I’m on my way to see him now.”  
  
“Good. Thank you for telling me.”  
  
Jim couldn’t resist. “You never have to thank me.”  
  
Another pause, and then, “I’m not so sure about that. Well,” a brief, if awkward pause, “good night.”  
  
“Good night,” Jim said. Or good morning, he thought, as he pocketed his phone.  
  
There was still a killer out there, and they had far more questions than answers at the moment. A good case could be made that there really wasn’t much to celebrate. All the same, Jim would have lit up a sparkler if he had one.  
  
Instead, he fumbled for a book of matches, struck one, and applied the flame to the business card. He let the burning piece of cardboard fall to the pavement and ground it out with his foot until there was nothing left but ashes. The usual means of communication would do for now.


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clues are discussed and plans made for the day over breakfast at stately Wayne Manor.

“More oatmeal, Master Clark?”  
  
“Yes, thanks.” He added a sprinkle of brown sugar to the oatmeal, already deliciously enhanced with cinnamon, crunchy chopped walnuts, and dried cranberries. For a moment he even indulged the traitorous thought it was better than his mother’s. Clark spooned up some of the oatmeal and looked across the table, its polished oak surface strewn with file folders. Bruce, absorbed in the meticulous notes Alfred had compiled last night, had barely touched his own bowl. He shared a look with Alfred and shrugged.  
  
Alfred shook his head with the air of one long resigned, and went back to the stove to turn down the kettle and prepare a cup of tea. “Now back up a bit.” Alfred cleared a space on the table and sat down with his tea. “Go over that bit about _The Gray Ghost_ again.”  
  
“We’re not entirely clear on that,” Clark said and glanced at Bruce again. “It was an animated movie of the series, with the Gray Ghost investigating a mystery centered around this spooky old crypt. The villain, the Keeper, used it as a base of operations to carry out his crimes. He was always wrapped up in a hooded monk’s habit, and he had these glowing red eyes that he used to bend people to his will.”  
  
“Primarily, however,” and Bruce looked up from the notes at last, “he commanded an army of shadows that he sent out to spy on and terrify his victims. It was fairly eerie, actually. There were complaints from parent’s groups after it first aired, in fact.”  
  
“I don’t seem to recall your watching that one.”  
  
Bruce smiled. “Well, you wouldn’t have.” He looked at Clark. “You saw it?”  
  
“Just once; it was a little too creepy for me.” A bit sheepish, he added, “My parents might have been some of the ones complaining about it.”  
  
Bruce smiled some more. “I think the key elements that apply to our case is the glimpse David caught of a cloaked figure, lurking in the shadows.”  
  
“Yes,” Alfred said, dryly, “because that’s something that hardly ever happens in this city.”  
  
Bruce ignored him and addressed Clark. “You remember the Keeper had a sidekick?”  
  
Clark frowned, searching his memory. “Igor?”  
  
“Close—Grio.”  
  
“An anagram of Igor,” Alfred said and sipped his tea. “So you have confirmation of two killers. Didn’t we already know that?”  
  
“We didn’t know the nature of the relationship: master and servant.”  
  
“Or, possibly,” Alfred said, “the dynamic of the relationship was father and son.”  
  
Clark looked from one to the other. “Don’t serial killers usually operate alone? The quiet, neighborhood loner that none of his neighbors ever suspect until the bodies turn up in the backyard?”  
  
“That’s the classic profile, but there are variants,” Bruce said. “A familial connection of some kind, as Alfred suggests, _would_ cover certain aspects of the crimes.”  
  
“The time span, for instance.” Clark made a tentative gesture towards the notes; Bruce nodded his consent, and Clark picked them up for a look. “You’re not convinced.”  
  
“I don’t have a hypothesis of any kind just yet; there’s not enough data to form one. As much as there can be rules about this kind of thing, most ‘families’ that kill together,” Bruce didn’t actually make air quotes, but Clark heard them, “do so as part of a cult atmosphere. These murders,” he tapped a finger at a file folder, mercifully closed, that Clark knew contained crime scene photos, “have aspects of that, but…” Bruce bit his lip, shook his head. “We need more evidence. What are you smiling about?” he asked, frowning in response to Clark’s cheerful expression.  
  
“I know this is all pretty grim,” Clark waved a hand to indicate the flurry of files and reports, “but it’s kind of fun seeing you in full Sherlock Holmes mode.” With Bruce still in his dressing gown, their breakfast jostling with the reports, the analogy wasn’t so far off. All they needed was a thick fog outside and the sound of Big Ben tolling the hour, and it would be easy to imagine this was 221B Baker Street instead of stately Wayne Manor.  
  
“Hmm,” Alfred got up and began to clear the table, “I suppose that would make me Mrs. Hudson.”  
  
Clark laughed at Alfred’s comical expression. “Not at all. You’d be Mycroft, knower of all things.”  
  
Alfred shared a look with Bruce. “I knew there was a reason we liked him, Master Bruce.”  
  
“If you two are quite done?” Bruce said with a grumble, just as if he hadn’t been smiling half a second before. “The dynamics of this relationship could be an important factor in identifying them. Our friend from last night—let’s call him Igor for now—was abandoned, left to fend for himself when the attack on the McIvars failed,” he continued, manner slightly pedantic. “That’s master-servant, I think, not father-son. Igor was wholly dependent upon this other man, but this other man was entirely concerned with saving his own neck, Igor’s fate be damned.”  
  
Alfred dried his hands on a dishtowel and came back to the table. “It strikes me a better label, if labels there must be, would be dominant-submissive.”  
  
Eyes narrowed, Bruce considered that. “With, or without sexual connotations,” he murmured.  
  
With a discreet look that encompassed Bruce and Clark, Alfred said, “Sadly, not all relationships do lend themselves to a healthy joining of equals.”  
  
The only thing that kept Clark from a furious blush was noticing a hint of color tinge Bruce’s high cheekbones, as his friend—his lover; there, he dared to think it even if he wasn’t ready to say it out loud—concentrated furiously on the contents of another folder. It was perhaps overly bold to use that word at this stage. As things stood, there had been exactly one make out session, after all. One really intensive make out session, he reminded himself, as Bruce looked up again and revealed the faint bruise Clark’s kisses had left on his throat. He wished Bruce could have marked him with a love bite, some physical reminder he could look at and think, _That’s where Bruce kissed me. That’s where he touched me. That’s when he slipped his leg between my thighs and rubbed—_  
  
Yes, well, that wasn’t the most productive train of thought, just at the moment. It had been embarrassing enough when he had thought Alfred was about to walk in on them this morning. Fortunately, Alfred had simply knocked on the door and left a tray with coffee, and two cups, on the small table in the hall.  
  
Not that there had been anything to walk in on, of course, not really. After their long night, Bruce had pretty much collapsed into bed. Clark had been ready to retreat to the guest room but Bruce, already half-asleep, had caught his arm and tugged. Clark had carefully settled down beside him. He had been so overwhelmed by the level of trust on display that his libido had been completely absent. When Bruce stirred enough to respond to Jim Gordon’s call near dawn, Clark had anticipated being ordered from the room at that point. Instead, maybe because Gordon’s news had loosened something up in him, Bruce had settled against him, an arm thrown over his chest, and promptly gone back to sleep.  
  
If it didn’t precisely qualify as cuddling, it was close enough to suit Clark. It had been incredibly intimate, he knew that. Maybe not in a way that transcended sex—he’d have to indulge in transcendent sex with Bruce first _(yes, please)_ , to make any sort of comparison—but certainly in a way that provoked a profound case of the warm fuzzies. What was a hickey, compared to that?  
  
It had been sweet of Bruce, though, to worry that his invulnerability meant he might be immune to sensation. That he couldn’t distinguish between a sock to the jaw and a caress. Truth be told, Clark didn’t know if he felt any physical sensation, be it pain or pleasure, quite as profoundly as a human. If there was a deeper intensity to the breathtaking sensation Bruce invoked in him with the slightest touch, he was afraid it might knock him for as big a loop as a piece of Kryptonite.  
  
Speaking of which… “Alfred?” He held up a page of the notes the older man had put together. “What’s this about shooting stars and fireballs from the sky?”  
  
“Yes,” Bruce took the page from him, “I wondered about that, too.”  
  
“Like as not it’s nothing,” Alfred said. He sorted through the folders and pulled one out. “It’s just, I found this,” he said as he shuffled through some papers. “It was in with a sort of unofficial report that a Commissioner Enoch Younger had compiled in connection to a series of murders that occurred in 1951.”  
  
“1951?” Bruce leaned forward, eyes even more alight with speculation. “Matching the Gravedigger’s M.O.?”  
  
“To the smallest detail. However, the police and popular press of the time called him the Grim Ripper back then.”  
  
“So it wasn’t a typo,” Bruce murmured to himself.  
  
Clark wanted to protest that couldn’t be possible. Deep down, though, he had known there was something uncanny about these murders; something that would lead them far off any kind of beaten path to find the solution.  
  
Bruce gave him a sympathetic look, as if he’d read his mind. “You had to suspect this was headed somewhere unusual after getting a good look at Igor.” He handed the folder to Clark. “Here, have a look.”  
  
He looked, at a chart this Commissioner Younger had drawn that appeared to connect a series of 1951 murders to ones committed in 1936. Arrows branched off from there to other dates: 1928, 1918, 1906, 1902. Each year was accompanied by a cryptic notation: One notation, **Meteor Shower** , had been circled three times, the paper indented with the outline of a paperclip that had once secured a yellowed, almost brittle newspaper clipping from 1902. Clark handled it with great delicacy.  
  
 _“Gothamites,”_ he read aloud, _“were treated to a celestial display of the most spectacular nature last night. Fire rained down from the sky like brimstone, and struck the home of Mr. Hezekiah Price, keeper of the lighthouse at Wayne’s Point with so much force they tore holes through the roof. It is rumored a daring expedition is being launched by members of the Curiosities Club to venture out to Wayne’s Point and surrounding islands in an attempt to recover these fireballs for scientific study…”_ He looked up from the old article and shook his head. “Perry White would read me the riot act if I turned in a piece like this.”  
  
“It is entertaining,” Bruce said.  
  
“So is this,” Alfred said and produced a well-thumbed hardcover book. “You’ll see Commissioner Younger referenced it there,” he tapped another page of notes Younger had scribbled down. They read as if he had been thinking out loud to himself, as he had tried to sort things out in his mind. “The title rang a bell so I had a look through the library and found this.” He held it out for them to see: clothbound and roughly the size of a fat paperback. _Behold!_ proclaimed the title, stamped in flaking gold letters across the red cover. It had been written by someone named Carl Castle, and published in Gotham in 1919, Clark saw as he thumbed through it. “I was curious and did some further searching and discovered Mr. Castle had been a founding member of this Curiosities Club. Your great-grandfather,” he looked at Bruce, “appears to have been a member for a brief time, in fact.”  
  
Clark asked, “And what exactly was this Curiosities Club?” Although, now he had a look at the table of contents, he was able to form a rough idea.  
  
Head cocked, a distant look in his eyes as he traced down a memory, Bruce said, “If it’s what I’m thinking of, it would have been a group of friends, business associates who shared a common interest in collecting unique and unusual items. Sometimes they were motivated out of a pseudo-scientific or antiquarian interest, but a lot of them simply wanted to be the only one who possessed some particularly macabre or freakish object.”  
  
Clark thought that over, inclined to find the whole business highly suspect. “So, it would have been like a bunch of guys bonding over beers and their coin collections?”  
  
“Minus the beers, I suspect, but yes, essentially.” Bruce looked directly at Clark. “I suspect one of the items most coveted would have been meteorites.” He took the book from him and leafed through it, stopping at a chapter entitled _Raining Fire and Brimstone_. “This looks like an account of the 1902 meteor shower,” he said as he rapidly scanned the text. “Carl Castle and other members of the club did set out an expedition to find any fragments.” He skimmed some more. “It wasn’t the lark originally imagined, though. By the time they set out, a kind of plague had broken out in Gotham.”  
  
He read aloud now from the book, _“The common point shared by all the Walking Dead of Gotham was determined to be the stones that had fallen from Heaven. Hezekiah Price, keeper of the lighthouse at Wayne’s Point, was the first victim of the strange malaise. When a rescue party reached his home to begin repairs to his roof, they found Hezekiah in a state akin to catatonia. The first thing all members of the party remarked upon was his appearance of great age. This was of note as Hezekiah, at this time was but forty years of age. Overnight, however, following his exposure to the glowing rocks—“_  
  
“Glowing?” Clark said.  
  
Bruce looked at him, confirmed, “Glowing.” He read on, _“…following his exposure to the glowing rocks, Hezekiah had the appearance of one approaching his century mark. More, some whispered his appearance put them in mind of a corpse exhumed from its grave. Nor were his faculties in any way spared. It was judged all that could be done for him was to remove him to the confines of Arkham Asylum where he could, at least, be cared for.”_  
  
“It can’t have been Kryptonite,” Clark said. “Not in 1902.”  
  
“Contrary to what Lex Luthor thinks, everything that falls from the sky isn’t Kryptonite.”  
  
Clark nodded, thoughtful, and with a strong sense of where this was going. “What happened to the members of the rescue party?”  
  
“They fell ill with the same wasting disease,” Bruce read on. “It was determined samples of the rock were needed for study. It fell to members of this club to go out and, at great risk to themselves, collect pieces of the rock. Two didn’t make it back.” He hesitated a moment, as though stunned. “My great-grandfather _did_ return with the samples, secured in a lead-lined box,” he glanced up at Clark, “and made use of all the resources available to him to have the meteorite studied, in hopes they could discover a cure.”  
  
“Did they?”  
  
Bruce read some more. “After a fashion. They produced some kind of distillation which was administered to everyone who had come into contact with either the rocks or those already infected. The greater their exposure to the meteorite, the less effective it proved, however. Hezekiah never recovered.” He closed the book and set it on the table, as baffled as Clark had ever seen him. “What connection did Commissioner Younger make between this and the murders?”  
  
“Perhaps,” Alfred ventured, “he theorized the killer had been exposed to the meteorite and was acting under its influence.”  
  
Bruce stared at him, or through him really, as if he was poised right on the edge of some revelation. After a moment, however, he blinked and gave his head a slight shake, and settled back in his chair with an air of defeat as enlightenment escaped. “It would be helpful if we could look the Commissioner up and talk to him.”  
  
Clark shot a look at Alfred. “Is there any chance of that?”   
  
Alfred shook his head. “I’m afraid not. That was one of the things I looked up. Enoch Younger died after suffering a massive heart attack while out fishing, in January 1967.”  
  
“Fishing in January?” Bruce said.  
  
“It has been known,” Alfred replied.  
  
“Not in Gotham,” Bruce said and shuddered minutely as if imagining the sensation of being out on a patch of ice in the dead of winter with a fishing pole.  
  
Clark smiled and suggested, “He could have had family, though, or colleagues he might have confided in. I could get to work on that.”  
  
“Don’t you have an article to write for Perry White?” Bruce said.  
  
“Wrote it and got it to Perry while you were napping.” Clark dug through the pile on the table and came up with that morning’s edition of _The Daily Planet_. He held it up for Bruce to see. **GRAVEDIGGER’S PLOT UNEARTHED!** Front page, above the fold, byline Clark Kent. “I think the headline writers are the only ones having fun with this story.”  
  
“May I be the first to congratulate you, Master Clark, on the Pulitzer in your future?”  
  
Clark couldn’t help ducking his head in embarrassment. “I don’t know about that, Alfred, but—thank you.”  
  
“I have no doubt of it. Now, Master Bruce, if you would be so good as to clear your things off the table?”  
  
“I think that’s our cue to get out of his hair.” Bruce stood up and started collecting notes and reports.  
  
“It is after nine,” Clark said as he pitched in and gathered up stray folders and other items.  
  
Bruce grumbled something that sounded vaguely derogatory about hayseeds who got up with the chickens, but Clark let it go. He had just put _The Daily Planet_ on top of the box when he noticed a scrap of paper had slipped to the floor. Retrieving it, he saw it was part of Commissioner Younger’s notes. An old, slightly faded black and white photograph was clipped to it.  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
“One more tidbit from Commissioner Younger.” Clark tried to remove the paper clip, but it had been on there so long he was afraid he’d rip the whole thing apart. He lifted the photograph and looked at Enoch Younger’s bold printing : **J.B. spotted. Alive?** Alive had been underlined twice. **Wayne and Castle gone, no help there. Hezekiah’s body gone. Am I chasing a wild hare?** Wild hare had been underlined three times and circled for good measure. “What do you think?” he asked, handing it to Bruce.  
  
Bruce studied the old photograph, turning it over to see if anything had been scrawled there to identify the men posed in costumes from over a hundred years ago. One was fairly tall, slim, and fair haired; he might have been handsome if not for the look of pompous disdain on his face. The other man appeared less refined, not quite as tall or slim, darker, with something shrewd and cagey about his face.  
  
“He was trying to connect the dots, too.” Bruce lingered over the notes, bit his lip. “What’s this about Hezekiah?”  
  
Clark shrugged. “He’d died. Younger couldn’t speak to him. Hezekiah would have been up in his nineties by then.”  
  
Bruce frowned and shook his head slowly. “That isn’t what Younger wrote, though. ‘Hezekiah’s body gone,’ – that sounds like Hezekiah died and his body was removed.”  
  
“Removed from where? Not his grave,” Clark said. He would swear he actually saw the wheels turning in Bruce’s brain.  
  
Bruce gave him a somber look. “I think it might have been.” He tucked the scrap in with the other material. “I think we better find out.”  
  
~*~  
  
Clark lounged in the door of Bruce’s bathroom and watched him getting ready to shave. “You know what I think? I think you do have a hypothesis.”  
  
Bruce worked up a froth of soapy foam in the old-fashioned shaving cup and then worked the lather over his face in precise strokes of the horsehair brush. Only when he was satisfied with the distribution did he reply. “Are you saying I’m deceptive?”  
  
“I’m saying you have been known to skirt the truth on occasion.”  
  
Bruce reached for the gleaming straight razor. “Whereas you are a paragon of perpetual veracity.”  
  
Clark made a face and wished he’d never told Lois that he never lied. At the time, that statement had been truthful. It was only after a few harsh realities had set in that he had realized there were times he needed to skirt the truth as well. “I’m just saying, if I knew what you’re thinking I might have a better idea of what questions to ask. Not to mention this Commissioner Younger might have just had some wacko bee in his bonnet.”  
  
Scraping away lather and whiskers, Bruce rinsed the blade and sucked his lips in to get at the bristles along his upper lip. As he rinsed that away, he looked at Clark in the mirror. “Some of our police commissioners have had dubious integrity but I’ve never heard of any who were inclined to be wacko.”  
  
Clark pulled another face. “You know what I mean.” He watched the dangerously sharp blade travel over Bruce’s throat and was unaware he held his breath. “I wish you’d use a safety razor like everyone else.”  
  
“This is how my father did it,” Bruce said. He pulled the skin taut on his jaw and scraped with the razor again.  
  
Going by the monogrammed **T.W.** on the cup and razor, it was also his father’s shaving kit. That knowledge gave Clark an unexpected warm feeling. He stepped closer and carefully pried the razor from Bruce’s fingers. “The Gravedigger and Igor were some of the people exposed to the meteorite, some of the Walking Dead. The radiation they absorbed brought about some metamorphosis that has kept them alive and committing these murders for the last one hundred years. Something like that?” he said as he meticulously, tenderly ran the razor along Bruce’s jaw.  
  
“Something like,” Bruce said. He sounded like he’d been holding his breath, too. “Do you remember the buttons on Igor’s coat?” he asked as Clark put the razor down.  
  
About to kiss Bruce’s smooth, damp throat, Clark straightened up and gave him an incredulous look. “What?”  
  
“The buttons on his coat.” Bruce threaded his fingers through Clark’s hair. “Remember them, then look at the photograph again,” he murmured. The words were a puff of breath, soft and warm against Clark’s lips, just before Bruce kissed him.  
  
Clark moaned into the kiss and angled his head to go in for more. “I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with us getting turned on during a conversation like this.” Bruce was naked under the dressing gown now. All Clark had to do was slide the silk off his shoulders…  
  
Bruce stepped back, eluding him, but with a smile. “I propose a rain check.”  
  
Clark glared at him. “You would. You know,” he rubbed his thumb over the indentation at the base of Bruce’s throat, “there’s a name for a heartless flirt like you.” His fingers stroked along finely defined collarbones, disappearing under the silk and slipping it off one broad, muscular shoulder.  
  
Bruce smirked. “Said the pot to the kettle.”  
  
Clark smiled and bent his head to kiss that shoulder, to flick the tip of his tongue against the bruise he’d left. “Promise me something?”  
  
Fingers buried in Clark’s hair, Bruce didn’t sound quite so composed. “What?”  
  
“Don’t go to Crime Alley without me.”  
  
“Clark…”  
  
“I know you can handle it, Bruce.” Clark straightened up to look at him. “It’s not that. I just want to be there to see what you find.”  
  
“There might not be anything. It’s just a hunch.”  
  
“Uh-huh. Your hunches are anyone else’s rock solid certainties.”  
  
Bruce smiled again and reeled him for one more kiss. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”  
  
Clark laughed and held him close, and kissed him deep. They were both breathless and flushed when they finally came up for air.  
  
“Now,” Bruce pretended he had his composure back and smoothed his hands along Clark’s shoulders, straightened his tie, “get out there and find more material for your soon-to-be Pulitzer Prize-winning story.”  
  
“Yes,” Clark said, smile wry, “to be submitted for the special zombies and other reanimated corpses category.”  
  
Bruce grinned, kissed him one more time, and shoved him out the door.  
  
~*~  
  
On his way out, Clark detoured to the library and the box they had left on a table. He focused inward, replaying the scene on the beach and paying special attention to Igor’s coat buttons. Then he picked up the note Commissioner Younger had written so long ago and looked at the picture attached.  
  
The shorter, stockier man with the crafty expression—the buttons on his frock coat were an identical match.


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark goes to interview Gloria Bingham, granddaughter of Commissioner Younger.

“I was just fixing myself a cup of tea,” Gloria Bingham said. “Would you join me?”  
  
Clark, feeling cramped in the cluttered confines of Mrs. Bingham’s living room, pushed at his glasses and nodded. “Thank you. That’d be swell.”  
  
She smiled benignly and told him to make himself comfortable, she would just be a minute. Clark looked around at the crowded room; there wasn’t an inch of space not covered with framed photographs and breakables of every sort. He stepped carefully over a fat and fuzzy gray cat sprawled belly up, all four paws in the air. Head cocked, he considered it for a moment and was about to check for a heartbeat, when it twitched and cracked one green eye open to look at him. When he failed to produce a can of tuna or a catnip toy, it promptly lost interest and went back to its nap. Clark successfully made his way over to a large, overstuffed armchair that looked like the only thing in the room that he couldn’t break just by breathing on it.  
  
He heard the tea kettle whistle in the kitchen, assorted clinks and clanks, and then, Mrs. Bingham was headed back his way carrying a tray laden with a tea pot, cups, and a plate of cookies. As Clark started to get to his feet to help, she said, “Stay put, I’ve got it,” and settled it down on the large, square coffee table without spilling a drop. Alfred would have given her a thumb’s up—if Alfred ever gave anyone a thumb’s up, of course.  
  
As she sat down on the edge of a love seat (mauve, draped with a lacy throw and jammed with pillows, balanced on delicate-looking cabriolet legs), Gloria Bingham poured out the tea and gave Clark a knowing smile. “Cliché crazy old cat lady’s cottage, huh?”  
  
“Umm, well, I wouldn’t say…” He trailed off as he realized she was laughing at him. With a slight shrug, he said, “Just a little bit, yes. Minus the cats.”  
  
“You should have been here six months ago when I moved in. Aunt Maxine left me the house and her collection of twelve furballs. Sugar, milk?” She indicated the tea.  
  
“Just sugar, thanks. What happened to the rest of them?” he asked.  
  
“I got them all adopted out and kept Roscoe there.” She handed him a cup and saucer and offered the cookies; he took a macaroon. “I keep meaning to box up all this stuff,” she waved a hand at the room, bracelets jangling, “and get it to Goodwill or something, but,” she sighed, “it’s hard. You know?”  
  
He took a sip of tea and nodded. “I do know. It’s tough to box up their things and send them away, when there are memories attached to every item.” He had been in the process of packing up the farm and selling it for about twenty years now. Or at least it felt that way sometimes. “She raised you?”  
  
Gloria finished a date bar and washed it down with tea. “From the time I was seven. There was a car crash. My parents were killed; I got this.” She lifted her bangs for a moment to reveal a faded scar. “I don’t honestly remember much about it, just that Aunt Maxine was there to fuss over me and feed me ice cream and tell me stories about her cats.” She put down her cup and saucer and stretched over to retrieve a sketch pad and hand it to him. “I’ve been doing some drawings, the bare bones of a story, based on them.” She shrugged, a little defensive now. “It’s a way to remember them and Aunt Maxine.”  
  
“Sounds like a great way,” Clark said as he leafed through the bright, cheerful sketches. “These are pretty good.”  
  
“I was going to be a great artist. Then I got married and all that got put on hold.”  
  
“And now?” Clark gave her back the sketchbook and took another macaroon.  
  
“Now, I’m divorced and starting over. And you must be very good at your job, Mr. Kent, because you just got my whole life story out of me with just a couple of questions.”  
  
He looked sheepish. “I enjoy talking to people and hearing their stories.”  
  
“So why do you want my hear my grandfather’s? He’s been gone a long time.”  
  
“Almost forty-five years. You didn’t know him?”  
  
Gloria Bingham shot him a look, doubtful edged with suggestion of pique. “I’m thirty-two, so, no, I never did.” In fact, she was thirty-five, but he saw no reason to steal that small vanity from her. “It always felt like I did, though, with Aunt Maxine and the Thursday Night Club always telling stories.”  
  
“I’m…sorry,” Clark leaned toward her. “The Thursday Night Club?” What was with all these clubs?  
  
Her smile was warm again, forgiving him for the age mistake. “Some old colleagues of my grandfather who’d come around to play poker and gossip. I wasn’t supposed to eavesdrop but you know what they say about small pitchers and big ears.” She got up and maneuvered her way over to a cherry wood credenza, selecting two of the photographs framed there. She handed the big one to Clark. “That’s my grandfather,” she said, “and this is Aunt Maxine and the last two members of the club,” she held out a smaller, framed snapshot. “The one on her right was…oh, Grant Something. And I called the other one Mr. Monte because he taught me how to play three-card monte.”  
  
Clark laughed. “Sounds educational.”  
  
“Well, I’ve never been rooked –if you don’t count my ex.”  
  
He studied the picture of Enoch Younger, taken about the time he would have been commissioner, Clark guessed. Commissioner Younger looked about forty, with salt-and-pepper hair and a brush mustache, a faint twinkle in his eyes that suggested something just past the photographer’s shoulder was on the verge of cracking him up. It was a good face, he thought, an honest face. For whatever that was worth. He suspected Bruce wouldn’t invest much faith in a gut instinct hunch like that.  
  
He put Commissioner Younger’s picture down and turned his attention to the one of Maxine Younger and her friends. They were all dressed in the height of fashion, circa 1974, and standing on the front porch of this house. Grant Something and Mr. Monte were considerably older than Maxine, who he knew would have been about forty then. “They were police officers?”  
  
“Detectives.” Gloria took the framed snap shot back. “Retired by then, I think.” A wistful look to her now, she added, “They’re all gone now.” She put them back in their places and then pointed at the stairs. “That’s where I used to sit, third step up, and listen to them talk in the kitchen. Most of it wasn’t very interesting, but some of it,” unconsciously, she hugged herself for a moment and rubbed one arm as though she felt a chill, “well, let’s say that anyone who thinks it’s only since the Batman came along that Gotham got its freak on doesn’t know what they’re talking about. This place has always had stuff going on that would give you nightmares.”  
  
“You’ve been following this recent series of murders?”  
  
“A little bit,” Gloria said as she sat down again and freshened her cup with more tea. “Let me tell you, I don’t go anywhere by myself at night, and once I’m back here I triple check everything’s locked tight.” She slanted him a look, as if on the verge of another confession, but then thought better of it and sat up straight with her tea.  
  
Clark suspected she had been about to admit she slept with a gun under her pillow, maybe her grandfather’s old .38 Special. He couldn’t approve of that, but he could understand the fear that would drive her to it. “That’s how your grandfather’s name came up,” he said. “I dug up some information that made me think he had dealt with a similar case back in his time, and thought it could make an interesting piece to go with the main story.”  
  
She leaned forward a bit, coppery eyes lit with heightened interest. “You mean the Grim Reaper killings?”  
  
“Yes. You do know about them then?” It was interesting that she would make such an instant connection. Clark suspected she may have been following the recent crimes more closely than she wanted to admit. Bruce might have suspected a sinister quality to that evasion; Clark thought she probably just didn’t want him to think she had a ghoulish, morbid interest in the murders. People were funny that way, he’d found.  
  
“It would be hard not to, growing up with Aunt Maxine. I guess Granddad got a little obsessed with those murders. Not, you know, cuckoo or anything,” she said, a defensive note in her voice as she drew a circle over her temple in the universal symbol of being cuckoo. “It just got under his skin and wouldn’t let him go.”  
  
“Perfectly understandable, Mrs. Bingham. They were pretty grisly murders.” He adjusted his glasses again and jotted a couple of things down in his notebook. He tapped his pencil against the notebook, not really sure he was getting anywhere here. Might as well play a long shot, he decided, and asked, “I don’t suppose he left anything like a journal behind? Somewhere he wrote down his thoughts about the case?” There had to be something more than those few scraps Alfred had found.  
  
“You mean like a scrapbook?”  
  
He blinked. “A scrapbook?”  
  
“Well that’s what Aunt Maxine called it. You want to see it?”  
  
“Umm, well, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”  
  
“Not a problem. Wait right here,” she told him as she got up and headed for the stairs.  
  
Roscoe the cat, as though sensing something was in the air that might eventually lead to kitty treats, got up and stalked over to jump up on the coffee table and stare at Clark. “Mreow?”  
  
“Your guess is as good as mine. Bruce has this whole elaborate theory worked out but not much evidence to support it. It sounds kind of crazy to me, but you never know.”  
  
The cat mreowed again, this time in commiseration with having to deal with bats and their wacky ideas. He sniffed at the cookies, batted at a macaroon and licked it, before getting down to work on the small pitcher of milk. Clark discreetly wrapped the cat-licked cookie in a napkin and put it in his pocket.  
  
“Do you need some help up there, Mrs. Bingham?” He did a quick scan of the upper floor and spotted here in what had to have been Aunt Maxine’s bedroom. At least, it was filled with all the same fussy and frilly décor, with the same cheerfully cluttered atmosphere.  
  
“I’ve got it!” she called back down, and he could see that she did—although she did whap her elbow as she wrestled a cardboard box down from a closet shelf.  
  
He met her at the foot of the stairs and took it from her there, carting it into the kitchen at her suggestion. She joined him there a minute later, after scolding Roscoe when she found him up to his whiskers in the milk.  
  
“You know,” Clark said as he lifted the lid off the box, “it’s possible your grandfather collected material about the murders because he planned to write a book about them.”  
  
“I suppose that’s possible.” Gloria started to remove items and set them out on the Formica table. “The way Aunt Maxine described it, though, it sounded like more of a personal obsession.” She glanced at him, hesitated, then said, “Did you ever watch _The X Files_? Aunt Maxine always said they must have based Fox Mulder on Granddad, they were so alike in being tenacious and wanting the truth. Aunt Maxine said that’s what brought on his heart attack. He was out looking for clues even then, years later, and it just got the best of him. Oh, here’s the scrapbook.” She took out a thick, leather journal and handed it to him.  
  
“I thought he was out fishing when he had his attack.” Clark flipped through it. The contents looked to be along the lines of the pages Alfred had found. A mix of notations and newspaper clippings carefully pasted to the pages. He put that down and reached for a paperback reprint of _Behold!_ , well-thumbed and full of underlined passages and annotations jotted in the margins.  
  
“Fishing in January?” She gave him an are-you-crazy look, apparently inclined to share Bruce’s opinion of that activity. “He was going out to the lighthouse. Aunt Maxine always remembered because they’d had a fight about it. She always felt bad about that, I think, how the last thing she ever said to him was that he was a damn fool.”  
  
Clark nodded; he understood that all too well. Regrets were one of the hardest things to get used to. “You don’t remember ever hearing a name, though, some person of interest he might have singled out?” He put the book down and carefully took out a manila folder, secured with a rubber band.  
  
Gloria looked at him, searching her memory again. “I don’t think so. It’s funny, though, the lighthouse—Aunt Maxine always got its name wrong.”  
  
“Wayne’s Point?”  
  
She nodded. “I’d correct her, tell her the right name, but she’s shake her head and say no, that place didn’t belong to the Waynes. It was…Ichabod’s?” She bit her lip, searching his face as if Clark must know the answer. “Something quaint like that, like out of a fairy tale or the Bible. Ichabod or Zachariah, something you don’t hear every day.”  
  
“Hezekiah?” he suggested.  
  
She looked at him, tried it out silently, and shrugged again. “Could have been.”  
  
 _Hezekiah’s body gone…_ “Ah, Mrs. Bingham,” he shoved at his glasses, “would it be possible for me to borrow this box? I promise to return everything,” he added as she continued to fix him with a doubtful look.  
  
“You think it’s that important?”  
  
“I think it might be.”  
  
“All right. I want it back, though, and I don’t want to have to go through a bunch of rigmarole to get it.”  
  
“You won’t, you have my word.” Clark groped in a pocket, frowned as he found the macaroon, then located a business card. “This is my contact information at _The Daily Planet_. If I’m not there, ask for Lois Lane.”  
  
Gloria perked up at that. “Oh, hey, I’ve seen her on TV. You know her?”  
  
“We work together, yes,” he said and smiled. “She’ll vouch for me.”  
  
She looked over his card and pinned it up on the little bulletin board by the backdoor. “All right, I’ll trust you with this,” she said, and Clark thought he might send Lois flowers to thank her for the magic of her name.  
  
He reached for a flat, black box and started to open it—and snapped it shut just as quickly at the first glimpse of a glowing orange rock; as the first tingle of radiation sought him out. He swallowed and fought off a sensation of faintness. At Gloria’s worried look, he forced out a smile. “Could I have some water, please?”  
  
“Sure, just a sec.”  
  
As she took a glass from a shelf and turned on the faucet, Clark scanned the box, confirming it was lead-lined. Like the one Bruce’s great-grandfather had used to collect the meteorite fragments? He almost wanted to open the box again, test it; try and confirm that brief sizzle of energy he had felt was…off. Kryptonite, but _not_ Kryptonite, if that could make any kind of sense.  
  
“Thanks,” he said as Gloria brought him the water. He took a sip. “This material could really answer a lot of questions.”  
  
“Well,” she looked skeptical, “I know there’s no statute of limitations on murder, but isn’t it pretty unlikely the killer’s still out there?”  
  
“There could still be a kind of justice for the victims’ families. And, like you said, Gotham’s always been a little different.”  
  
~*~  
  
Outside, he put the box into the trunk of his rental car and waved goodbye to Gloria Bingham as she watched from the front porch. Behind the wheel, he thought about it for a moment and then headed in the direction of Arkham Asylum.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batman joins Jim Gordon at the cave to examine the skeletons more closely and advance some theories about the case. Also, Davey wants to get to the bottom of all this zombie business, and since Aunt Jessie's no help he decides to go find someone more useful...

“Master Bruce?” Alfred looked around the cave and noted the suit and the Tumbler were gone. While not without precedent, it was certainly unusual for Gotham’s Dark Knight to go out during daylight hours.  
  
Curious, Alfred went over to the cork-backed chalkboard Master Bruce had found somewhere and dragged down here. A map of Gotham was pinned to the cork back, and several areas were marked. The Wayne’s Point lighthouse was circled, lines radiating out from it to the stretch of beach where Superman had found the skeletons of the bootleggers; more lines led to Robinson Park, Crime Alley, the waterfront—and a question mark was placed over Wyldecliffe, the old, burnt out ruin of one of Gotham’s great homes, looking out over the ocean. Alfred could follow the other routes to some extent, but he wasn’t quite sure what Master Bruce had in mind with that last one.  
  
On the chalkboard, Master Bruce had a rather elaborate chart in progress, somewhat akin to a genealogy chart. There appeared to be far more question marks than hard data at this point, nor did Alfred care to speculate on the portion that seemed to amount to _Solomon Grundy begat Hezekiah Price_. He had really had quite enough of zombies.  
  
~*~  
  
“Do we know who they were?”  
  
Every time Batman showed up out of the blue and startled him out of his socks, Jim Gordon vowed he wouldn’t be taken by surprise again. He repeated that vow as he turned, rubbing the back of his head where he’d bumped it against the cave roof. Batman loomed in the cave entrance. “Would a little warning be too much to ask?”  
  
Batman just stared at him, none of his foreboding lost even though it was still broad daylight. “I’ll keep it in mind. The skeletons,” he prodded. “Can they be identified?”  
  
“The M.E. thinks DNA can be extracted. That’s to make it official. If you want my hunch,” Jim looked at Batman, who inclined his head, “I think we’ve solved the mystery of whatever happened to the Kelly brothers and Alvin Lacey.”  
  
He spoke as he moved around, pointing items out to Batman. “It was 1928 when a rumrunner called the _Lady Danger_ pulled up off shore and began unloading its cargo of bootleg booze, brought up from the Caribbean under the supervision of Alvin Lacey.” He indicated the skeleton jauntily wearing a straw boater. “Preliminary identification based on reports Alvin was only five-foot-six and proud of the two gold teeth he sported.” A stray shaft of light glinted off the gold, bared in an eternal grin. “The Kelly brothers, Patrick and Dennis, were waiting on shore. That one’s Dennis,” he indicated the one with the wedding ring. “Married, father of four, eighteen months older than Patrick. And by process of elimination,” he gestured to the skeleton still clutching a Colt .45, “that would be Patrick, described as the hothead of the pair, the one you didn’t want to cross.”  
  
He watched as Batman bent to examine the bones, saw him spot the same grains of tobacco caught on Alvin’s lapel, some old blood spatters on the remnants of Alvin’s collar. “The rest of the gang departs to rest up before their next run. Alvin steps outside to smoke a cigarette, maybe he’s hears something and goes to investigate. He’s grabbed from behind and his throat is slit before he can scream.”  
  
“Reasonable conjecture,” Batman murmured, as if he could see it, too. “The other two?”  
  
“Blunt force trauma to the head for Dennis. We’re not sure about Patrick. If his revolver was loaded, he got off two shots before they got to him.”  
  
Batman scanned the floors and walls as if the shell casings might still be there. Or maybe one patch of chipped rock would reveal where a bullet had struck. Who knew, maybe they would after forensics had finished going over it all with the proverbial fine-toothed comb.  
  
“You’re getting this from a book?”  
  
“ _Tales of Old Gotham_. I’ll lend it you.” Jim couldn’t absolutely swear to it, but he thought Batman might have smiled just for a blink-and-you’ll-miss it instant. “The Coast Guard captured the _Lady Danger_ and her crew and when neither Alvin Lacey or the Kelly brothers turned up in custody, the story got around that they had sold out the rest of the gang in exchange for new lives and safe transport out of the country. It could be tough to make a case for this being the work of the Gravedigger.”  
  
“It makes sense, though.” Batman crouched down to examine the crates of liquor, brushing a thick swath of cobwebs out of the way. “None of this has been disturbed. If these three had been betrayed by members of their own gang, or waylaid by rivals, why leave the booze? Why leave the bodies when there’s the whole Atlantic right outside?”  
  
“That’s a good question whoever did it, actually.”  
  
“The bodies were arranged. You agree? They were killed outside, or in other spots in the cave, and later placed here?” Batman peered closely at him. When Jim nodded, he went on. “If your M.E. could travel back in time, before the bones were picked clean, I would recommend looking for signs of harvesting.”  
  
Jim stared at him, took his glasses off to polish the lenses, then stared some more. “Harvesting? As in organ harvesting?” He put the glasses back on and gave the skeletons a fresh assessment. “Not for any kind of blackmarket trade, not back then.”  
  
“Think mad scientist, of the Dr. Frankenstein variety.”  
  
Jim let that sink in for a moment. “You’re serious? Sorry,” he said hastily as Batman looked at him, “of course you’re serious. But what the hell were they doing?”  
  
“That book you’ve been reading, is there a chapter in it about the resurrectionists of the late 1896?” Batman said as he started for the cave entrance.  
  
Jim scrambled after him. “Resurrectionists…” He searched his memory to place the archaic word. “You mean grave robbers?”  
  
“Graves, mortuaries, cadavers from the morgue; whatever provided the least trouble.”  
  
Batman continued to fill him in as they made their way out of the cave. At first, he said, the police had dismissed the incidents as schoolboy pranks and simply advised that security be increased at all hospitals, funeral homes, and mortuaries. Not long after, the disappearances began. As it was the destitute and other dregs of society affected, no one bothered with it too much. Dropping off the face of the earth with no warning was what those sort of people did, after all. It was only when the bodies began turning up, left in shallow graves and mutilated, organs missing, that it became a matter of some alarm.  
  
Standing on a ledge, Jim shivered in the sunlight as he pictured a Gilded Age Burke and Hare slinking through the gaslit streets of Gotham. They would have found it even easier back then to lurk in its shadows, ready to pounce on the first unwitting victim to cross their path, and drag the unfortunate back to whatever lair they used to perform unspeakable experiments. He didn’t envy whoever had headed the investigation back in the day.  
  
“Were there any suspects?”  
  
“A few. The favorite was a Jasper Bloom, medical school dropout and purveyor of quack patent medicines. It wasn’t the first time he had come to the attention of the authorities. Previous charges varied from confidence schemes to attempted murder when the snake oil he sold poisoned several people. The charges never stuck, however, due to the intervention of his bosom chum, Darian Wylde.”  
  
Jim gave him a searching look. “Wylde as in Wyldecliffe?” He jerked his chin at the burnt out ruin of a mansion still sprawled along the cliff’s edge across the way. In its heyday, it was said to have rivaled Wayne Manor for grandeur. The families could not have been more opposite, however. Where the Waynes had always been philanthropic benefactors of Gotham, shady, sordid rumors had swirled around the secretive and reclusive Wyldes.  
  
“The same,” Batman confirmed. There was something speculative in his look as he gazed across the water at the ruin. “Wylde and Bloom shared a common interest in the search for an elixir of immortality.” He turned to face Jim. “That’s what the harvesting was about; it’s still their motivation.”  
  
“Wh—” No, he hadn’t just said what Jim thought he had. He watched Batman stride away along the shore and decided he could do with a few moments to digest that particular bombshell.  
  
He picked his way down the weed-choked slope that led from the cave. A few loose rocks clattered down the slope and startled a seagull perched atop one of the weathered posts, the only thing that remained of a fence that had once run along here. There had been a boardwalk once, too; the sand had buried it by the time Alvin Lacey and the Kelly brothers met their fates. The seagull squawked at them and took flight, wheeling by them low enough that Jim could hear the swish of its wings. He watched it soar out over the water to join its friends as they headed off in search of a better meal than the slim pickings around here.  
  
It was too beautiful a day for murder, the ocean gleaming silver under the sun. Even the breeze off the ocean had a softer quality than was typical this time of year. A day like this, so rare in Gotham, should be reserved for picnics and playing catch with your son in the park. Or collecting seashells, Jim amended as he caught sight of a sand dollar. He crouched down to carefully pry it loose, the shell delicate and gritty with wet sand.  
  
“Did you find something?” Batman called over.  
  
“Just a seashell,” Jim said. He had the impression Batman had expected more.  
  
Batman’s gaze swept up and down the beach, a fierce scowl in place. “There’s nothing here.”  
  
For his part, Jim was perfectly glad that there were no skeletal hands emerging from the sand or sea-washed, grinning skulls tumbled along the beach. This case was sufficiently macabre as it was. But he supposed Batman’s mileage might vary on such matters.  
  
“Let’s go to your office,” Batman said, brusque as ever. “There’s still a lot to go over.”  
  
“You think our friend in the morgue is Wylde or Bloom,” Jim said, his digesting done. He had the satisfaction of Batman giving him an impressed look.  
  
“I think he’s Bloom. If you can put someone to work searching your archives for his fingerprints, you should be able to confirm it.”  
  
Jim doubted anyone would thank him for that choice assignment.  
  
“Has your M.E. found anything yet?”  
  
Jim shrugged. “Dawson’s waiting to start the autopsy, but preliminary cause of death was a broken neck. Although Dawson says the man had no business being alive at all, given the advanced state of geriatrics. Oh!” He called after Batman’s retreating form, the black cape streaming out behind him. “There was one weird thing. Well,” he pulled a rueful face, “another weird thing.”  
  
Batman turned back, curious. “What?”  
  
“Dawson said the body was saturated with low level radiation. That’s why the autopsy’s been postponed; he has to wait until the body has been decontaminated.”  
  
Batman stared at him. “Radiation?”  
  
Jim nodded, and once more saw something he would have sworn was a pleased smile touch the Dark Knight’s face for an instant. Evidently another important clue had just snapped into place.  
  
“Come on, let’s go,” Batman said as he strode away once more.  
  
“I’ll take my own car, thanks!” Jim called after him.  
  
This time he was positive Batman smiled as he turned to look back at him.  
  
The seagulls swooped through the air and squawked after them.  
  
~*~  
  
“What do you know about Enoch Younger?”  
  
Just letting himself into his office, Jim Gordon gave a start and looked over at the dark-cloaked figure standing by his window. “How did you…” Then he noticed the curtains fluttering in a breeze. “Never mind.” He ran a distracted hand through his hair and hung up his coat, carefully placing the sand dollar on his desk blotter. “Enoch Younger?” He sat down, thinking. “Before my time, almost before my father’s. He was police commissioner just after the War but,” he chewed his lip as he searched his memory, “it seems like he took an early retirement after suffering some kind of breakdown.”  
  
“A breakdown?”  
  
“On the job. Some case had really gotten to him.” All things considered, Jim suspected he had some idea of how Enoch Younger might have felt.  
  
Batman gave him a perceptive look and said, “You’re not like him.”  
  
As there were days he felt like he was one showboating psycho away from gibbering in a corner, Jim appreciated the endorsement. “Oh, well,” he sighed, “if it came to that, I could always try opening a bowling alley.”  
  
“Bowling alley?”  
  
“Younger’s Bowling Alley. That’s what Enoch did when he left the force. I think his sister inherited the place.”  
  
Batman nodded. “I know it,” he said, and Jim knew he must be getting punchy from the way he nearly cracked himself up as he pictured Batman, in full costume, playing a game of ten-pin.  
  
“Nothing,” he said and shook his head as Batman gave him an uncertain look, perhaps on the verge of withdrawing that endorsement. “Now, what exactly have you found out? What was that about an elixir?”  
  
“Elixir of Immortality. It goes back to the old alchemists,” Batman said. He picked up the sand dollar, handling it with surprising delicacy. “Paracelsus and John Dee wrote about it. Count Alessandro Cagliostro claimed to have gotten the formula from Saint-Germaine, who had obtained it from Isaac Newton.” He put down the sand dollar and gave Jim an irritable look. “They were all just as cracked as these two…”  
  
~*~  
  
While Aunt Jessie talked to the police, David wandered over to look out one of the big hotel windows. He didn’t know about Gotham, he decided, as he watched the sun start to set over the city. All those gargoyles, and the way it felt like it was full of shadows even at high noon, it sure wasn’t much like Central City.  
  
He’d never heard of anybody ever getting zombified in Central City, either.  
  
That’s what all the whispers were about back there. The reason his parents were in quarantine and he couldn’t go to see them. No one had said anything, but he’d overheard the policemen talking when they thought he was asleep. “Are Mom and Dad going to die?” he asked straight out as the police officers left and Aunt Jessie locked the door behind them.  
  
She gaped at him; she probably thought a little kid like him didn’t know about stuff like that. “Who said anything about that?”  
  
“They’re turning into zombies, aren’t they?”   
  
She looked even more flabbergasted now. “For Christ’s sake, kid, what movies do they let you watch? Nobody’s a zombie. There’s no such thing as zombies.”  
  
“I heard those policemen talking about how this was how it started a couple of years ago, and how one of them had hoped he never had to see another zombie as long as he lived.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Aunt Jessie scratched her elbow and got that look like she’d just about sell her soul if she could smoke a cigarette, “people say a lot of things in this town. _I’ve_ never seen any of it.” Which made her the final authority. “There’s no zombies.”  
  
“If you say so.”  
  
“I do say so. Didn’t they teach you any manners, either? What do you want for dinner?”  
  
“Are we having room service?” he asked. Maybe this could be his chance.  
  
“We’re sure not going out. Come on,” she handed him a menu, “pick something. Bruce Wayne’s paying for it so knock yourself out.”  
  
He hadn’t realized that. “Do you know him?”  
  
“Bruce Wayne?” She shrugged. “Just to see around,” she said, like it wasn’t any big deal one way or another. David could tell she wouldn’t mind seeing Mr. Wayne around some more. She’d ogled him enough down at the police station.  
  
The police station had been pretty bad, people pestering him with questions and all, but at least Mr. Wayne had been there to color with him. Mr. Wayne hadn’t talked to him like he thought David was a baby, either.  
  
“Where’s he live?”  
  
“What do you care where he lives?”  
  
He shrugged. “Can’t a person ask questions?”  
  
“In my day children were supposed to be seen and not heard,” Aunt Jessie muttered.  
  
David bet her day had been back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  
  
~*~  
  
He’d seen his chance when Aunt Jessie went to her bedroom to get her purse so she could give the guy with room service a tip. As the guy stood there and looked bored, David lifted lids and checked out the food. There was lobster for Aunt Jessie and a cheeseburger for him. He took a couple of bites of the burger and eyeballed the lobster, still in its shell and reminding him more of a bug than anything else with its feelers and all. He’d heard the way they fixed lobster was too boil it while it was still alive, but it was supposed to be okay because the lobster was too dumb to feel anything. David bet the people who decided that had never asked the lobster.  
  
Now or never, he decided as he heard Aunt Jessie coming back. He picked up the lobster for a closer look and when Aunt Jessie told him to put that down right now, he threw it at her. She made to catch it, screamed when she did, the room service guy started over to her, and while they were busy with that David slipped out the door.  
  
As he ran for the elevator he hoped the lobster could know it had gotten a little bit of revenge.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark and Bruce compare notes, have a misunderstanding, and before they can sort things out Alfred informs them that Davey has gone missing, and that there appears to be some crisis involving his parents now. Oh, and someone broke into the police morgue.

“So, no zombies?”  
  
“No. No zombies, no monsters—or at least, strictly of the twisted human variety.” Head cocked slightly, Bruce looked at Clark. “You look disappointed. Did you want zombies?”  
  
Clark gave him a don’t-be-ridiculous look. “Of course I didn’t want zombies. It’s just,” he shrugged and tossed his notebook over on the coffee table, “I dug up a lot of information on Hezekiah, no pun intended, and now you tell me it was a waste of time.”  
  
They were in the library, at opposite ends of the couch, digesting another of Alfred’s excellent dinners—grilled sirloin, Yukon gold potato gratin, sautéed morels—along with the final pieces of the puzzle. A couple of things still had to happen but Bruce felt confident he had the answers now.  
  
“It wasn’t wasted. Those two dug him up for a reason. He’s just not out there somewhere forming an alliance with Solomon Grundy.” He’d had an idea there was the scent of red herring about Hezekiah Price. Or perhaps he just hadn’t wanted to deal with another outbreak of the walking dead. “It’s useful to know that they monitored his condition right up to the end.”  
  
“So did your great-grandfather and Carl Castle,” Clark said, with more care than was really warranted. “How do you feel about that?”  
  
“I have no feelings about what Carl Castle did.”  
  
“Bruce.”  
  
He sighed and braced one foot against the table. He didn’t know what he made of it yet. Knowing that Andrew Wayne had kept himself updated on Hezekiah’s condition over the years, even going with Castle to visit him at Arkham, had been unexpected news. When this was all wrapped up he anticipated much time would be devoted to learning more about his great-grandfather and this Curiosities Club. What had been discovered so far had him fairly well convinced its members had cast their nets somewhat wider than the acquisition of freaks and oddities.  
  
He wondered what it said about him that he couldn’t recall a better time than the past few hours down in the cave with Clark, poring over old journals, letters, and articles clipped from assorted newspapers and magazines. What made it so remarkable was that he would swear Clark was just as fascinated, just as reluctant to have to put some of the material aside in order to stay focused on the case at hand. Even so, it was unlikely they had gleaned every last relevant detail from the mass of material, but what they had should be enough to finally connect all of the dots. He wished there was some way Commissioner Younger could have known he hadn’t been very far off the mark.  
  
“I’m intrigued,” he admitted. “I hadn’t really formed much of an impression of him before. All of this,” he indicated the thick, leather journal over on the coffee table, “will require a major reassessment.” The journal alone was a rare treasure trove. A bit scuffed up and battered after all this time, it had been diligently kept by his great-grandfather. It bulged with letters and postcards; its pages filled with sometimes cryptic, coded notations that he itched to decipher.  
  
“Major reassessment.” Clark snorted. “That’s one way to put it.” He scooted around on the couch, one leg stretched out along it so that his foot—his argyle sock-clad foot—could brush against Bruce’s thigh. “Does Commissioner Gordon share your belief that Igor is this Jasper Bloom?”  
  
“Gordon has to dot every i and cross each t precisely before he can make an official pronouncement.” That was just one of the reasons Bruce knew he would never cut it as part of the regular police force. “He agrees with me. We’ll know for certain when we get a fingerprint match.”  
  
“And I’ll bet the officers going through the GCPD archives searching for those prints are beside themselves with joy.”  
  
Feigning a lofty air, Bruce said, “I can’t be expected to do _everything_.”  
  
Clark laughed and brushed his toes against Bruce’s knee. “Yes, because there’s only twenty-four hours in a day.”  
  
Bruce pretended he didn’t notice Clark’s argyle toes molesting his thigh. “I still want to get over to Wyldecliffe to have a look around. We could do that later.”  
  
“It could be a date,” Clark suggested as his foot pressed against Bruce’s thigh.  
  
“Hmm, I don’t think so.” When they went out on date it wouldn’t include prowling around a burnt out old ruin in the dark. They could do better than that. Clark deserved better than that. Bruce had the oddest sensation that he might even be on the verge of believing he deserved it, too.  
  
Clark looked at him for a moment as if he was waiting for something. After another moment, though, he just gave a small shrug and sat up a little straighter, both feet on the floor. “I still think it would make a better story if an angry mob bearing torches had descended on the place and burned it to the ground.”  
  
“I think that only happens in old Frankenstein movies.” For a split second Bruce wondered if something was wrong but then Clark stretched over to reach for the journal, his body brushing against Bruce’s, and he could only conclude that all was well.  
  
Clark sat back and began to leaf through the journal until he located a collection of articles about Wylde’s Tonic for Men. It had been touted as a miracle cure that would restore your hair and vigor and generally rejuvenate you, one tablespoon at a time. It had only been after Darian Wylde made a small fortune on the patent medicine that people began to realize they had been sold snake oil, and an especially hazardous one at that. The tonic’s side effects had ranged from stomach cramps to heart attacks and strokes, many of them lethal and all of them debilitating. Bruce had taken note of the old advertising poster for the tonic, there in Crime Alley, and was moderately annoyed that he hadn’t made the connection right then. Like too many clues it loomed far more profoundly in hindsight than it had at the time.  
  
“At least ten deaths attributed to the tonic,” Clark murmured, shutting the journal again. “It’s hard to believe he got away with it.”  
  
“He might not have, not for much longer. The scandal and pending legal proceedings had made Wylde an unwelcome presence in Gotham. The other members of the Curiosities Club, his last refuge, were about to blackball him. The expedition to locate fragments of the meteor shower couldn’t have come at a better time. He and Bloom likely only intended to seize the opportunity to slip away and be written off as tragic victims of the meteorite. The rest of it was up to chance.” That was theory, too, but he was sure it had been something like that.  
  
Clark tapped the journal’s cover thoughtfully. “Okay, this is your chain of events? This Wylde is obsessed with finding an elixir of immortality—”  
  
“Or eternal youth. And you don’t have say it like I just pulled it out of a hat.”  
  
Clark smiled. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”  
  
“Hmm.” Bruce folded his arms and dared him to pick it all apart.  
  
Clark smiled like he relished the opportunity. “So, he’s got this obsession, he’s already conducted questionable experiments on stolen cadavers, and then he stumbles across fragments of a meteorite that produce the exact effect he’s been searching for? That’s a lot of coincidence.”  
  
Well if he put it that way… Bruce grimaced with impatience and reminded himself this was why they worked so well together. “I’m sorry, were you asleep when I read the part about Wylde visiting Hezekiah and the other victims of meteorite exposure? He was charting their degree of exposure, the extent of their symptoms. He didn’t volunteer to be part of the expedition out of a sudden burst of altruism, Clark.”  
  
“If you say so.”  
  
“I do say so.”  
  
“But it’s a good thing you don’t have to prove it in a court of law.”  
  
Bruce glowered some more; Clark grinned.  
  
“Can I ask one more question?”  
  
Bruce’s reply was an inarticulate, grumpy rumble. It was actually helpful for Clark to poke at the theory and search for weak parts. The more they brainstormed, the greater the clarity. It was always like that in their arguments: the plans they eventually implemented were always a blend of the best of them both.  
  
“Why did Wylde and Bloom embark on this murder spree when Wylde knew it was the meteorite and not the elixir that had transformed them?  
  
“I don’t think he did make the connection. I think he believed the meteorite radiation provided the crucial catalyst to spark his elixir.” Bruce shrugged, willing to concede those were a few of the details that still needed to pop into place. “He’s a dangerous crackpot, Clark, not an evil genius.”  
  
“We need to figure out what the meteorite is. It’s not Kryptonite,” Clark said, thoughtful, “but it’s something _like_ Kryptonite.”  
  
“We’ll analyze it,” Bruce said. “To have an effect on you, even if it just made you feel faint, it must share some properties with Kryptonite.”  
  
“There was a moon, Wegthor,” Clark said slowly, his expression lit with the usual solemnity that came when he remembered Krypton, the world he only knew through other’s recollections. “A scientist named Jax-Ur destroyed it, killing five hundred people. He was the first person my father sent to the Phantom Zone.” He blinked and shook his head. “That could be it, although that would have been only a little while before Krypton itself was destroyed.”  
  
“Maybe. We’ll check it out.” Bruce was less concerned with where these glowing, deadly pieces of space rock came from than with their potential to harm Clark, or to transform anyone else who came in contact with them. Who knew what prolonged exposure might do to Clark? “Whatever it is, wherever it comes from, you need to keep away from it.”  
  
“It’s not like I go out of my way to play with meteorites.”  
  
No, only if someone else was in danger and there was no other way to save them than to expose himself to the deadly radiation. Bruce couldn’t even stay angry at Clark about that, not when that was the kind of thing that made him Superman. He could do his best to run interference, however.  
  
And it was almost scary how strongly he anticipated spending some time at the Fortress. Just him, and Clark, and some space rocks. Could life get any better? As Clark closed the distance between them faster than it took Bruce to blink he decided that, yes, there was always room for improvement.  
  
“I didn’t even feel a breeze.”  
  
If Clark’s smile had been bright before, its wattage was off the scale now. “Do you feel this?” he whispered as he came in for a kiss.  
  
“I don’t know.” Bruce slid his hands around the back of Clark’s muscular neck, his fingers tangled in the silky black curls there.”Maybe you should try again.”  
  
“Mmmm, how about now?” Clark nuzzled under his chin, so close Bruce could feel the soft brush of his eyelashes.  
  
“Yes, I feel that,” he sighed. He shivered at the delicate sensation and anticipated how it would be when they finally made it to bed. Clark would be so careful with him at first, every touch measured and tender. It would be up to Bruce to coax his passion along, to make him feel safe and comfortable and able to trust himself if he let go. All of that world-saving power devoted to pleasure—this must have been how mortals in ancient days felt when they welcomed a god into their bed.  
  
“What are you laughing about?” Clark drew back just enough to favor him with a quizzical look.  
  
“Myself. For ever thinking this would work out as I planned.”  
  
That uncertain look deepened. “Plan? You planned this?”  
  
“Not this.” Bruce touched Clark’s face, fingers trailing along the handsome features with a kind of reverence. “I couldn’t have foreseen this if my life depended on it.” If his brain hadn’t been uncharacteristically lagging a few steps behind he would have stopped right there. Its previous tour-de-force in assembling the facts in the case must have caused some kind of temporary short-circuit, however, because he kept talking even as a vague warning began to frantically wave for his attention. “I was going to seduce you, convince you it was time we resolved the sexual tension between us. But better than that, classic playboy moves. You would have been suitably swept off your feet,” he promised as he watched Clark’s smile start to dim. “What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t know before I touched you, is that the rest of it never would have worked. I could never have touched you once, like this, and ever let you go.”  
  
He frowned a bit and began to falter. He didn’t understand why Clark just sat there, face crumbling as something bleak and desolate chased all the sunlight from his eyes. “Clark, I… What’s wrong?” He sat back now and swiftly reviewed the last couple of minutes. Hadn’t he just poured out his feelings? Hadn’t he all but said he was head over heels in love with him?  
  
“You planned this?”  
  
“Not _this_. I could never plan this. Didn’t you hear a word I said?”  
  
“Oh, I heard plenty.” Clark pulled away from him and tried to mask the hurt and disappointment in his eyes with anger. “Am I supposed to feel honored that you allotted me what, an entire weekend, and not just a one night stand?”  
  
Bruce sat back, arms crossed over his chest. “You didn’t hear one damn word I said.”  
  
“Oh, I heard every word, loud and clear.”  
  
“If you _had_ , you wouldn’t be sitting there, acting like some, some—Kryptonian drama queen.” _So there_. Damn it, he’d been right all along: he never should have let this happen. He had known it could only end in disaster.  
  
Clark stared at him, incredulous. “Drama queen? _You’re_ calling _me_ a drama queen?”  
  
“Yes, well, if the tiara fits…” Damn it all to hell, why couldn’t he shut up? As his thoughts raced wildly to find some way to fix this, the last thing he needed was Alfred and his inevitable disapproval of him making a mess of the best thing that almost happened.  
  
“Master Bruce—”  
  
“Not a good time, Alfred.”  
  
“Be that it may, sir.” Alfred favored them with both with a look that had little patience for their dramas. “I believe you should know that Commissioner Gordon has activated the signal.”  
  
In an instant, almost glad of the distraction, Bruce crossed the room to drag back the curtains and gaze upward at the bat symbol, stark against a bank of clouds. “What’s happened?” he asked as he went to the piano and picked out the code that opened the way to the cave.  
  
“Quite a number of things, to judge by the breaking news bulletins.” Alfred followed them both into the elevator and touched the button to send it downward. “Unnamed sources report the McIvars are exhibiting symptoms of the zombie plague. There has been an incident at the morgue. And,” the elevator touched down and Bruce sprinted across the floor, shedding clothing as he went, “the boy, David, has disappeared.”  
  
Bruce skidded to a stop and looked back at him. Had he gotten everything wrong? he wondered and cast a glum look at Clark.  
  
Predictably, all Clark said was, “What do you want me to do?” Everything about his expression was closed off, his manner as distant as if some kind of force field had gone up between them, but it was clear none of that would keep Superman off the job.  
  
Bruce nodded an acknowledgement of that. “Stay here. I’ll let you know when I have some details.”  
  
He was into the suit in record time, the snap of the utility belt loud in the cave’s quiet, and the Tumbler ready to go. He spared one more second to look at Clark and tell him, “We’re not done,” and then he was on his way to the city. The Mission was top priority, it always would be. He and Clark were on the same page there, at least.  
  
~*~  
  
As the Tumbler raced off for Gotham, Clark walked over to the board Bruce had set up, a jumble of photocopies and newspaper clippings collected there, pinned up as he and Bruce discovered them and agreed—or not, in a few instances—on their bearing on the case. The green chalkboard on the other side was filled with Bruce’s chart of the crimes, intricate, each step meticulously marked out. There was some speculation, some facts to be filled in, but from where Clark stood it looked like Bruce had pulled it all together. When it was The Mission, when the thing at stake was the meting out of justice, Bruce rarely put a foot wrong.  
  
Clark sighed and traced a finger over the _Solomon Grundy to Hezekiah Price_ portion, a bold **X** drawn through that now. He wasn’t even sure what he was sad about: that he had deluded himself into believing Bruce wanted the same thing he did, or that Bruce’s brilliance failed him utterly when it came to anything outside The Mission.  
  
Busy picking up Bruce’s clothes, Alfred cast a thoughtful glance Clark’s way and discreetly cleared his throat. “May I say something, Master Clark?”  
  
“Is there any way I could stop you?”  
  
“Short of your extraordinary abilities, no.”  
  
Clark sighed and nodded. “You’re going to tell me Bruce is complicated and more comfortable with a microscope and test tube full of crucial evidence than with interpersonal relations.”  
  
“Hardly; I am seldom in the habit of stating the obvious.” Alfred gave him a look of mild censure. “Someone Master Bruce cared for very deeply once told him that his true face was the one that terrified criminals; that everything else about him was a pretense and she could not love the creature of darkness he had become.”  
  
Clark winced. How could anyone who knew Bruce, who had ever loved him, be that blind to the amazing person Bruce had become? “She never saw him at all, then,” he said, and was surprised at the vehemence behind the words. It hurt him, though, to think of Bruce ever being let down that way by someone he loved. “He didn’t believe her, did he? He knew better?”  
  
“I’m not sure he did, not then.”Alfred gave him a pointed look. “Of late, however, I believe he has begun to reevaluate matters.”  
  
Clark nodded slowly and let out a pensive breath. “I need to think, Alfred.”  
  
“Of course, sir.”  
  
He glanced at the board, head tilted as he focused outward to listen to the world, Gotham’s slice of it anyway. “I’m going out for awhile, try and find the boy. Tell Bruce I…” He hesitated and remembered Bruce touching his face, something like wonder in his eyes, his voice, _‘I could never have touched you once, like this, and ever let you go._ ’ He remembered, too, the flash of confusion, of hurt that Bruce had swiftly masked with anger as Clark accused him of being shallow and without feeling.  
  
He looked at Alfred and smiled. “Tell Bruce I’ll be back.”  
  
“Very good, Master Clark.”  
  
Well, it wasn’t as if he had ever thought falling in love with Bruce would be tranquil or routine. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting it to be.  
  
Chapter Nine coming soon...


End file.
